Introduction

The OCR AS Media studies coursework is made up of two tasks and is worth 50% of the AS Qualification.

1.      Preliminary exercise: Produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Additionally candidates must produce a mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of DTP.

2.      Main task: The front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine.

All images and text used must be original and produced by the candidate

All candidates will utilise DTP (Desktop Publishing Software) such as InDesign and an image manipulation program such as Photoshop. Such software should be as close to industry standard as possible (This means No publisher!).   

A digital record of the project is required; therefore each task needs to be on its own unique blog.

Within your blog you are required to evidence a wide range of modern interactive digital applications

Before you Begin

In your area create a folder to store your work. You should call this folder something sensible such as Year 12, Media.

You will be uploading everything onto blogs at each stage of the project but ensure you double save everything regularly onto your own 16gb memory stick and also onto your school user area. Do not rely on one source to save work.

Saving regularly means every 10-15 minutes

Set up a Blog

A blog is a web based publication, or a web - log. A blog is established by the creation of journal like pages. These pages can contain typed copy, images, audio and video which are posted onto the site.

Each ‘post’ can be commented upon. This can be done as peer reviews, when a teacher or student posts a piece of work and others can add to it. For Media Studies, blogs are used to create your working portfolio. You will be required to frequently update to upload all your planning, research, production work and evaluation.

A moderator can then access this all to mark, instead of hard copies.

This is important for you, not just in terms of assessment but being able to document in real time your creative journey and incorporating a wider variety of media into the presentation of their work.

For Blogger you will need to set up a Google account.

Please make sure your Google account has a sensible name.

Your first Blog will be called something like

mynameschoolmagazineAS.blogspot.co.uk

Your second Blog will be called something like

mynamemusicmagazineAS.blogspot.co.uk

Please email your new blog address to chislehurstmedia@gmail.com

- Your first post should be an introduction, stating who you are and why you have set up the blog.