Week one plan & reflection

Day Three, friday 5/3/10

Today Ash was able to be in college, how ever Matt L had a film studies trip so was not, Tim was in as usual and Alie joined our team because the rest of hers were away. Nick asked us to produce 2 reports in the class Red Team took one and Gold took the other (Blue were away). i was needed in a steering group meeting with Loz and the quality control group so i asked Tim, Ash and Alie to do the report.





In the meeting we discussed what article ideas our groups had come up with and sorted out the good ones. We then decided very roughly how to organise them into a flat plan so we know how much room we have and how many more articles we have to think of.


After this, Alex and I looked into who would potentially be interested in taking out an advert in our paper, we need to put adverts in to raise enough money to cover the costs of printing the paper.

the companies we came up with are;

1. Media Magazine
2. The Junction
3. Picture House
4. OCR
5. Skill Set
6. Star Radio
7. Heart FM
8. Long Road
9. Haydens Dads Graphic design business

Gold Team

So far my team have been really good, Tim and Matt are both realy good workers and listen to what i ask them to do. Ash hasn't been in for this project yet so im unable to comment on how well he has worked, i was able to speak to him tonight on Facebook and update him on the project and ask him to start thinking about possible content.

Day Two, 04/03/10

Todays lesson we started trying to brain storm our ideas for content. To do this, Nick handed out pads of paper and we had to all write down ideas on the peices of paper and stick them to the bord, once we had a bord full of ideas we went through and got rid of the innapropriate ones and the un-useable ones like Nick charecter profile and a 'Dear Mike' section. these are either pointless becuse we are only producing one issue or a ridiculous idea.

I think this task helped us all realise how much we have to do and helped bring it all into perspective, although i still think people are all pretty confused with where to start and how to go about things. my self included. I would be able to be a better leader if i knew what was going on, but i think things will settle down better soon.

Day One in our teams and start of the project

In college today (02/03/10) we had the first lesson on the Xtended project, and my first lesson incharge of Gold team. It was fairly hectic becuase nobody really knows what their doing at the moment so there was just alot of confusion and people trying to get organised. Alex was getting in contact with our client, Jenny Graham (editor of Media Magazine). Kirk, Mike and Tara were trying to get things started in a working meeting, dishing out instructions to the 3 production teams and the three production leaders (Me, Phillipa and Loz) were trying to give instructions whilst doing our own work as well. I set Matt and Tim to write out a list of possible things to go into the paper, articles, activitys etc. Loz, Phillipa and i had a small meeting to disguss what each team was doing, Red team were looking into designing the layout and look of the paper and Blue team were researching.

Towards the end of the lesson Dave (Media teacher) who has experience working for publishers, spoke to us about the template of how a publishers works, he explained how each role is performed, how to lay out the production and make sure everyone was working from the same copy of work.

this talk really helped me understand what it was we needed to do.

at the end of the lesson i set Matt and Tim some work to do for tommorow, i asked Tim to write an article about a game weve been playing using wikipidiea and asked Matt to create a crossword reating to media in the online age.

Initial thoughts

My initial thoughts on the project are of fairly mixed feelings, I'm not very confident with writing tasks and the nature of a newspaper kind of worried me, but at the same time i'm looking forward to the challenge. Being appointed a team leader also scared me quite a bit, and still does.  When dealing with something i'm confident in i consider my self a strong, capable leader. But when it comes to something like this, that i'm not strong at, all my leadership skills brake down. I hope i'm able to pull through, i like a challenge so it's going to be interesting.

Project Q&A

After Nick had explained the project he asked us to all write down any questions we had, we then took it in turns to ask our questions, these are the most relevant ones asked:

• When does it go to print? - Everything has to be finished and ready to be sent off by April 1st.
  
• How new does what we talk about have to be? - Everything has to be up to date. It has to be for people our age, so there's no point talking about Napster and stuff. Try and focus on things teachers are less likely to know about. Under the radar stuff.
  
• What is the budget? - Nothing. We must raise production costs ourselves.
  
• What are the production costs? - 500 copies of full colour 12 page news is £500.
  
• Can we credit ourselves at the end? - Yeah, go nuts.
  
• Do we know anyone that might put ad's in? - Yeah, Media Magazine, The Junction, OCR.
  
• Do we choose who does what? - Yeah, you vote for who does what.
  
• Are we supplied with the information? - No, you need to source your content yourselves.
  
• What methods of distribution do we have? - Sold with Media Magazine, on the website
  
• Is there a limit to content? - No copyrighted material, no inaproppriate language. Aimed at our age.
  

Xtended Project schedule

1-5 march - defining the task, setting up blogs, allocating jobs, early research, project proposal forms.

8-12 march - research and planning, feedback from client, ongoing blogging of ALL activity.

15-19 march - draft materials and further feedback, ongoing activity blogging.

22-26 march - trial materials with year 12 and make refinements for finished product/ newspaper

19-1st april - completion of newspaper for client and printing, completion of activity log and evaluation activity.

Assignment of Job roles

In todays lesson Nick handed out a sheet with all of the role on, blank and we had go away and fill in who we thought would be best in each position.

(here is a picture of the sheet nick handed out)

Once we had all filled in a sheet we handed them back to nick and he collated the information and assigned to roles.

• Liaison = Alex
• Evidence = Tara
• Reflection = Mike
• Schedule =  Kirk

Red Team

• Loz (Leader)
• Hayden
• Matt H
• Dave

Blue Team

• Phillipa (Leader)
• James
• Alie
• Joe

Gold Team

• Me (Leader)
• Tim
• Matt L
• Ash

Nick colated the information from our sheets to get the leaders and QC team and then the 3 leaders (Me, Loz and Phillipa) sat together and worked out what the most productive teams would be. We wrote down who was available:

• Tim
• Matt L
• Matt H
• Hayden
• Alie
• Ash
• James
• Joe
• Dave

We then decided out of those who were the least reliable with attendance, because we didn't want to put all the unreliable people in one group as there would often be nobody from that group in lesson and we would end up with big chunks missing from the paper.

The people that turn up the least are: 

• Joe
• Ash
• Dave
• Hayden

with this in mind we put one of each in a team and Hayden and Dave together because they are slightly more reliable and we had to put two in one group. the rest of the teams we just tried to spread abilities and working styles out.

Introduction to the Xtended project

The Xtended project is our next project were doing for the diploma. For the project we are producing one issue of a news paper style revision guide for students taking the media A2 exam on Media in the online age.

We will be producing the news paper in a class, the class will be divided into 4 groups of 4. The 4 groups are Blue team, Red team, Gold team and Quality control group. The Quality control group is made up of: 

1. The 'Liaison' who is the person that will speak to the client.
   
2. The Schedule manager who will keep everyone on track and remind them what they need to do.
   
3. The Reflection manager whos job will be to keep an eye on everyones blogs and advise them of how to improve them.
   
4. The Evidence manager who will gather eveidence and make sure everyone has relevant evidence on their blogs.
   

Each of the three colour teams (Blue, Gold and Red) have 3 workers and a leader, the leaders job will be to talk to the quality control group and take the points and needs of the paper to the 3 workers to get things produced.