Reflective Journal #3

This week was the week where I really started to get into the work that we would be doing for the rest of the year, the induction period was over. The first thing we did was have newsroom with Radio and IMedia which is always an experience because we rarely get to work with radio the rest of the week. The first and second years all worked together and we had a speaker from bbc cambridge radio come in and give us a talk. After this all three of the groups split and as Print, we started working on our articles for the college online Magazine's launch. We worked on this all through the day as the deadline was for the following Wednesday.

At the next session I was given my first assignment for the year which was an article for a creative arts magazine on Printwork art. This would include the advantages and disadvantages, and say what they were used for. We were also encouraged to get an interview with someone for our article and I chose a friend of mine who is doing a fine art foundation. I thought I would include quotes and pictures. For the rest of the session I started to research and draft an opening paragraph. Anyway, until next time,

Katie 

Reflective Journal #2

This week the first thing we had to do collectively as a Print Based Media Level 3 was to come up with a new name and logo for the school magazine. Originally the name was for many years 'Banter', and the second year print students felt that a change of name would benefit the magazine as Banter was not ideal and could not be taken completely seriously. In my class we split off into small groups to brainstorm ideas of a name and to design new logos for the best ideas we could come up with. Once we thought of possible names for the magazine we had to search said names on google to see if they were already names of existing magazine's, and two of our initial ideas came back as taken (these being 'Hustle' and 'Portal' which we thought were some of our better ideas). By the end of the session we had come up with three main ideas, which were 'Crackdown', Oodle and Tattle which were all unused. We had also created logos for these new names.

In between the time after the last session and the next session, by ourselves we had to brainstorm ideas for stories to print in the next issue of the college magazine. These ideas were to be pitched during the newsroom meeting with Print, iMedia and Radio as well as the overall journalism course tutor. I bullet pointed some rough ideas in my free time when I arrived home ready for the newsroom meeting. A lot of these ideas consisted of Halloween and Christmas stories because they are the closest holidays coming up in the next few months.

At the newsroom meeting radio, print and imedia all gathered in a rather crammed room to discuss the action for the day, afterwards each of the three sections divided up and split into separate classrooms to discuss how everything was going to run. In my course the year 1 and 2's were both there and we started off by giving out roles (e.g. Editor in chief, Editor and photographer)by a year 2 member simply asking what everyone wanted to do. This was a good was of sorting everything out as everyone got to decided themselves whether they wanted to do something or not instead of having a job thrust upon them. After this we again split up into small groups/pairs/individuals to think up fund raising ideas for the magazine and we came up with a whole load of ideas that we could use, for example; Having an American candy sale because if it a packet that the product isn't from around here, most will buy. Another idea was to hold a funfair with a number of stalls because it will be an event that will be planned in advance so more people are likely to come and it will actually be in a venue/hall so there won't be a load of people clogging up the college corridors with queue's. After my group came up with these ideas we put them on a power point presentation to pitch to the rest of the group at the end of the session. 

After this, for the rest of the session I spent my time working on my article ideas, which honestly took forever because I myself am a perfectionist and nothing seemed good enough or anything I could write enough about. Finally, after a lot of procrastinating and running ideas by my classmates I came up with three possibilities which included one main article idea which I will follow through on and write to the best of my ability. Two of the three articles were Christmas themed because the next issue we're going to bring out is the winter issue, but the article I want to write is not Christmas themed. 

By the end of the session my course(Print)had collectively decided that the new name for the college magazine is going to be 'The Print' because it's simple, easy to remember and mature.

Finally in the last session of the week we each wrote a glossary of Print media terms that we may possibly be able to use or reference to in our coursework and/or articles. These were words such as Hand etching and Linocut. This was helpful because I had no idea what some of the words meant and wouldn't have wanted to make a fool of myself in the future for not knowing.

Today has been an interesting week but anyway until next time,

Katie 

Reflective Journal #1

The first week of college for me was my one and only induction day where Level 3 media students from Radio, iMedia and Print were gathered in a classroom to participate in the days activities and learn the basics of their courses as well as all the essential college info (e.g. Email setup, telephone numbers and course leaders). The most important thing of the day for me to do was to actually get enrolled because that was something I was yet to do. 

The first activity of the day, after a semi-long powerpoint presentation was to get to know our fellow classmates through an ice breaker game. This game involved us writing three things down on a piece of paper, two truths about ourselves and one lie about ourselves, and the rest of the class had to guess which one was the lie once the person read it out. This was a good way to get comfortable with one another as everyone on the first day is petrified with one another and it also gave us a chance to get to know a bit about the people we hadn't spoken to yet because maybe we weren't sitting near them. 

After this as a class we watched a video about Islamic women protesting about wanting work, which was really interesting because it made you think about all of the opportunities that we as women over her as opposed to women elsewhere. Also the fact that just by getting people to sign signatures on a document meant that they were at the risk of being sent to prison truly shocked me, because I am not the kind of person who regularly watches the news so whenever I see a story like this it really makes me think. Are parts of the world really that far behind? and are we ever going to be as women able to stop fighting for rights, rights that men have always haved just because they are men.

The last thing we had to do for the day was to pitch an idea for a story in groups to the rest of the class. The reason for this was to get a general idea of what we would be doing as a journalism course as a collective. For the remainder of the day we had to pitch an idea for a story that we could post in our school magazine 'Banter'. To break the ice a little in my group because none of us knew each other, I thought that it would be a good idea to find out what everyone was interested in so that we could find out if there was an area in particular that we could cover and find our story. After brainstorming for a fair amount of time we decided that fashion and music should be our area. After more brainstorming and sharing of ideas we decided that we were going to cover how music has influenced fashion over the years and researched fashion icons from the decade 1960-2010. At the end of the session we pitched the idea to the rest of the group and afterwards got mostly positive feedback from the rest of the group.

Unfortunately I couldn't attend the second induction day because of very personal reasons which I do not wish to share on the internet. Needless to say I have no more to write on the induction period of college. 

Anyway until my next update, 

Katie 

ABOUT ME:

Hey, My name is Katie Friel, I'm 18 years old and I am currently a student at Cambridge Regional College currently studying Print Based Media with Photography. I Previously attended Long Road sixth form college where I completed my A levels in Religious Studies, Media Studies and completed an AS level in Film studies. I thoroughly enjoy studying media, particularly in Journalism as that is the industry I wish to have a Job in.

In my spare time I enjoy reading different novels from different genres, from crime to fantasy, to religion and horror. I'm also a Christian, belonging to a free church and spend a lot of my time at different church events, socials and spending time with my friends there. I am also fascinated with the art of drag and enjoy attending drag shows with my sister whenever I can which may sound strange to some people but I find it to be a wonderful expression and form of art as well as it being entertaining. Another fascination of mine lies in the art of film. I watch a lot of films in my spare time when I am not doing my work or any of the above, no matter what industry I end up in I doubt that my love of film will ever go away. However when it comes to Journalism my min is set on working in the industry that I have loved since a young age, which is Fashion.

After this course I hope to go to university and achieve any goal/dream which I choose.