May 9, 2014

Working on my Professional Portfolio

Working and creating my professional portfolio online has enabled me to showcase my skills in an updated, multimedia format, as well as being able to promote my work online. As previously stated, I chose the website builder tool; Moon Fruit to build my professional portfolio.

Using my previously created plan on Lucid Chart and Mock Flow as a guide when beginning my portfolio design on Moon Fruit, I was able to save time as I already knew what pages I wanted on my website and what information they would contain.

I began with one of the templates provided by Moon Fruit, and decided that, in keeping with my simple yet elegant design plan, to use a black and white monochrome theme for my website. Although this can sometimes look too simple and boring, by adding enough informative and effective content, as well as embedding videos, audio, and online articles via issuu, and links to my social media profiles, I was able to create a simple yet high quality portfolio.

I created a header which had links to my 4 main pages: HOME, MY WORK, CV, and CONTACT, on the my work page I created 4 drop down options of PRINT WORK, BROADCAST WORK, ONLINE WORK, and my curation piece. I also provided a link to my blog on the MY WORK homepage. I also added Twitter and LinkedIn icons to my header which were linked to both of my professional social media profiles. Alongside this, I created a footer, which made my page look more professional, but also provided links via icons to my professional social media profiles.

On the MY WORK main page I created Icons for each of the different categories and sub pages linked to these. Next to the icons I also added some text describing the work I had done in each category and the skills I had learnt.

On my broadcast work page, I embedded some of the news days television work I’d done by using Moon Fruit’s YouTube widget, this was easy as all I needed was the html code to embed the YouTube video and have it appear onto my site. It also made my portfolio look better as lots of text can look boring, however with videos and audio it helped break it up as well as advertise my multimedia journalism skills. I also put some of the radio work I’d been doing on the broadcast work page by embedding one of our radio programmes using SoundCloud.

For My online work page, I printed off a few of my best online articles and scanned them into the computer and saved them as pictures as I couldn’t find a suitable programme to embed them from their online locations, and Moon Fruit didn’t have a widget for this either. I then used an online slideshow tool, which enabled me to create a slideshow of the articles that the user could scroll through. I then embedded this using the html widget on Moon Fruit and the slideshow was useable on my portfolio.

I also used the html widget to embed the online ISSUU versions of my niche magazine, ‘Drink Leeds’ and the news days magazine, ‘Leeds Business Review’.

On my Print work page, I did used the same process as what I chose to do for my online articles. I scanned them into the computer and used an online slideshow tool to create a slideshow of my print work, and embedded that onto my page. Not only is this useful, it also stops the page looking cluttered or having too much text or too many articles on it, and enables the use to view my published print articles without reading and scrolling for ages down the page, as well as creating a more multimedia aspect to my portfolio.

On my curation article page I simply used the HTML widget and embedded the html link via storify, which produced my full multimedia article on my website.
On My CV page I initially just copy and pasted my CV onto the page, however, this looked very boring and plain as it was just lots of small text on a white page. I then created some sub headings and changed the background colour and font on these, and made my text bigger and more succinct, this made the final page less boring, and much easier to read.

On my CONTACT ME page, I decided to keep it short and simple, providing a picture of me in action in the radio studio. Then my contact number, email and social media sites, although the social media icons in my header and footer were already hyperlinked to these sites. I also included references and testimonials written for me by my head of course at Leeds metropolitan and the business manager at one of my work experience placements with company, Una Health ltd. The final page was neat and tidy with all information needed on there, it was fitting with my minimalist and monochrome theme that I wanted for my portfolio online, with each page having exactly what I wanted on there and not too much as to look untidy or too little to be boring.

I then went through my entire site over a few days making sure everything was to a high standard. I added more pictures to give the site a bit more flair and made it better to look at, as well as breaking up bits of text. I spell checked all my written work and made sure all the pages were aligned correctly and in order.

Overall I enjoyed this experience, and was happy with the final result, using the skills I’d learnt over the course of this module I was able to create an efficient, quality, and multimedia as well as social media integrated website. This was not only useful in giving me more skills online, but also giving me an online portfolio that I can use in the future and that showcases a lot of my broadcast and multimedia work to prospective employers.

May 8, 2014

Work Experience Evidence

During my time studying Journalism at Leeds Metropolitan I have worked a two different companies; Una Health Ltd – an health and business company, and The Buxton Advertiser – a local paper.

The Buxton Advertiser – 20th August to 3rd September 2012.

I worked here for two weeks to gain experience at my first traditional newspaper, and print work environment. A lot of my work involved writing up the letters sent to the paper, for their ‘your thoughts’ page, the editor, John Phillips, showed me how to use their software which laid the pages of the paper out in a grid pattern, with specific sized boxes for each story. I also went out patch reporting with a more senior reporter and helped them getting stories as well as talking to local businesses etc. This was my first experience of a professional news environment and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Above is a story I wrote for the paper about the new police and crime commissioner and his stand against child abuse, entitled “Preventing child abuse is priority”.

Above are screenshots of my completed work experience form.

Contact details for work experience:
Mr John Phillips (Editor)
10 Scarsdale Pl, Buxton SK17 6EG
01298 767070

Una Health Limited – 3rd June to 2nd September 2013

I worked for this company as a social media and online correspondent for 3 months over the summer. My duties involved creating several social media pages/accounts for the company, enabling them to reach more customers and contacts in order to advertise their products in a more modern, easy to access way. I also built and improved several pages of their website, including making the homepage easier to access whilst improving the aesthetics of the site. I also used Search Engine Optimization to improve the site’s Google page ranking, enabling more people to find and click on the website.

Above is my completed work experience form for Una Health.
Contact details for this work experience:
Mrs Fiona Jacobs
Business development director
Una Health
fiona.jacobs@unahealth.co.uk
Unit 3 Scotia Road Business Park
Stoke on Trent ST6 4HG
01782 575180

March 30, 2014

Week 7 – Budget 2014 reflection

This week we covered the Chancellors 2014 budget as it was announced, as part of a live blog, using various multimedia tools to create on ongoing news platform covering the ins and the outs of budget day as it unfolded. We were split into two teams, a morning team (9am-12), and an afternoon team (12-4). We also chose a role to play such as reporter, social media, online, etc.
http://journalismatleedsmetropolitan.com/category/business/budget-day-2014/

I chose to be a reporter on the morning team alongside Civi Boakye and Alice Booth. The main challenge of this role I found was that the budget was being announced at 12 therefore, we would have to use the several predictions and previous announcements made on the budget to report on. We found that on of the main topics being announced in the budget later would be an increase in tax on tobacco and alcohol. With duty on wine up by 12p and spirits by 48p. And smokers being hit by a 28p rise for a pack of 20 or 25g of tobacco.

These increases in cigarettes and alcohol prices were one of the main topics we went out to get vox pops for, as we knew the public would be interested as this affected them. We got a camera and microphone and went to get a few vox pops on the people of leeds’ reaction to this suggested hike in tobacco and alcohol duty charges. Whilst one of the online team produced an article for our ongoing live blog and coverage on the journalism at leeds met website.

Students thoughts on alcohol and tobacco duty changes.

We first spoke to students as they are some of the most frequent drinkers and smokers and those with the least money, most of them thought the rise in price wasn’t a good thing but that it would not stop them drinking, most noting that they usually buy drinks for cheap before going out, rather than paying for drinks at a club. Others noted that the rise in tobacco pricing was getting ridiculous but not enough to make any of them stop.

When we got back to the media studio I opened the camera on a mac to edit the vox pop footage we had filmed in final cut pro, however we had found that we had used to wrong type of camera and therefore couldn’t edit the footage on the mac’s we had available, which meant i had to take the camera upstairs to edit the footage, I eventually managed to do this and uploaded the vox pop footage onto the Leeds Met Hacks Vimeo account, where from the online and social media team could link, embed, and tweet the content i had filmed to further their articles and stories, creating a multimedia platform for our coverage.

MVI 0194 (id) from Leeds Hacks on Vimeo.

MVI 0199 (id) from Leeds Hacks on Vimeo.

We had also arranged an interview with Dr Alex Nunn, a senior lecturer in Political Economy at the University, with pre arranged questions for him to answer about what he thought the afternoons budget would contain, what his thoughts on this were, and the impact of the chancellor and governments decisions for the next financial year. I filmed the interview, which was very interesting and then unfortunately couldn’t edit to footage, because the macs we and were out of date, however, the footage we had filmed was very good so didn’t need much editing. I then uploaded the video to YouTube and posted the link onto the Facebook budget day group in order for the team to successfully embed the previously filmed footage into their stories and articles on the live blog.

Overall, I felt the Budget Day went well, and both the morning and afternoon teams worked efficiently together in order to create a successful live blog and coverage of the days events. I believe that i worked well to get out early in the morning and talk to the public, as well as arranging interviews with people that would benefit our coverage of the event. Next time however, I would arrange to get all the correct equipment needed before hand, in order for their to be no mix ups on the day and me not being able to edit certain footage, or upload it correctly for the rest of the team to use.

https://storify.com/karlhodge/leeds-met-students-tweets-the-budget/

March 30, 2014

Week 6 – Curation

This week we used the curation and social media gathering tool, Storify, to create a 300 word story on a topic of interest. I chose the ongoing story of missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, the Storify program was very easy to use and enables you to create a story using various social media, news and online sources and you are able to embed tweets, articles, and videos into your story. This is an excellent multimedia platform journalism tool and i would definitely use it again, if not just for blog writing or practicing gathering content.

Link to story on Storify

[View the story “Malaysia’s missing Flight MH370: Latest update” on Storify]

March 26, 2014

Week 5 – Social media optimization

During this weeks workshop we looked at social media optimization and mainly, the importance and usefulness of Twitter to Journalists. As I already have a Twitter account, I was comfortable using Twitter and its functions. However, I had to create a new professional twitter account for my profile as a journalist, this is useful as it keeps my professional life separate from my private life which is important as a journalist. In this social media age, twitter is an invaluable tool for the profession as it enables me to build up a following, drive traffic for my work, engage with a specific audience, demonstrate my skills and overall, to create and manage my own personal brand.

To begin with I created a twitter account using my university email and then it took me through the set up where twitter shows you who/how to follow people, and manage and change your account. As this is my professional journalism twitter account I began by following people/organizations that were in the profession, such as top journalists and news organisations, as well as those based locally, in Leeds and Yorkshire, such as Look North, Leeds City Council, and The Yorkshire Evening Post.

Twitter then suggested I follow some well-known people, celebrities, MP’s, so I used the in built tool which orders people to follow by categories such as Entertainment – people like Stephen Fry, Jimmy Car, Jonathon Ross, News – BBC News, John Snow etc. Twitter then enabled me to find people who were in my email contacts list, and as this was my university/professional email, I had lots of useful professional contacts, which enabled me to increase my following/audience. I then used the ‘who to follow’ button to find more people to follow and the ‘browse interests’ link to find people to follow who had similar interests/professional journalism backgrounds in order to increase my professional social media circle.

I then search for lists of people to follow and found that Nina Diamond, a journalists, had created a large number of these public lists, which were interesting and contained a lot of people important to/interested in journalism which I subscribed to.

I then used the link on the workshop page to the article ‘100 twitter accounts every journalism student should follow’ and this gave me a lot more influential and important people to follow on Twitter building up my following to over 100 vital contacts/information providers. I then used the twitter management tool Tweet Deck which enabled me to sort my tweets/people I follow into useful columns such as ‘news’ ‘home’ ‘work’ etc. and helped me manage the content of Twitter online, this was really easy to use and enabled me to pick out important information or useful contacts for my professional social media site.

Finally, I added my professional twitter account to the twitter app on my smartphone which enables me to use and mange my twitter on the go.

March 12, 2014

Week 4 – Action Planning PT 1 and Gathering content PT 2

Today we began moving on to creating and gathering content for our professional portfolios, but first I created an action plan on the action plan and ‘to do’ list website Trello which was helpful in organising tasks that I had done, tasks that I was doing, and the tasks that I needed to do in order to create and finish my portfolio. It’s an easy to use website which enabled me to create a detailed plan and objective enabling me to focus on my portfolio.

PT 2.

After I had created this action plan I then began gathering content for my portfolio. I first looked at content I had on my blog and started looking at various articles I could use, some were out of date and couldn’t be used, but others were very good and I definitely would include them in my portfolio. Though I couldn’t include really long articles, as they would clutter my portfolio. I then began scanning the printed work I had done onto the computer ready to be put on the ‘My Work’ section of my portfolio. I also looked at how to embed video and audio using soundcloud and Vimeo in order to put some of my broadcast work into my portfolio.

February 26, 2014

WEEK 3 – Portfolio layout and design

This week we looked at the initial layout of our portfolios and what content we wanted to include in them. From my previous research into what tool to use when building my portfolio and looking at other professional portfolios, I have decided that I want a simple yet good looking design. A place where all the information I want to include is easy to access by prospective employers and use/read. I have decided to use Moon Fruit in order to build and design my portfolio, as it is easy to use and comes with a wider range of design and editing options than other programmes as well as being free for the first six months. This week I used the program lucid chart to create a flowchart with a basic layout and idea for what content I would include on my portfolio.

I then started on a basic design for the homepage, including want I thought would be useful on my homepage and the general layout of the page, links and what it would have on it. To do this I used the programme Mock Flow which enabled me to use various tools in order to create a rough layout of my portfolio homepage. This was good as it gave me an initial idea to build upon and showed me what would work as a homepage and what ideas would not.

February 12, 2014

Week 2 – Building a portfolio: What should you use?

In todays session we looked at what services were available to us when creating an online portfolio/website. We researched Hosted Content Management Systems, Website Builders, Portfolio builders, and Homepage builders. Ananalysing the various options available in terms of their strengths and their weaknesses. Overall I want to choose a site that looks good, is easy to edit and change the design, but also allows me to publish lots of written content and have clear easy links to my blogs, twitter account and cv.

Site 1

Service 1 Name: moonfruit.com	Rating out of 5
Media Support	4
Social Media Integration	4
Text Editing Tools	3
Blogging Tools	4
Cost	5
Customisation	4
Choice of Themes	5
Ease of Use	4

Site 2

Service 2 Name: 4ormat.com	Rating out of 5
Media Support	4
Social Media Integration	4
Text Editing Tools	3
Blogging Tools	3
Cost	3
Customisation	4
Choice of Themes	4
Ease of Use	4

I like both of these website and portfolio builders mainly because they are very design and social media oriented, however both are equally different. Moon Fruit was a very well designed service, with a lot of different themes to choose from, although many of these were top heavy not allowing as much written content as I would want. However, with an in-built website designer that’s easy to use it enables you to create a very personal, tailored site, which would be good for my purpose of building a professional portfolio. It was also very social media integrated, and easy to use, the only drawback I would say is that it is very design and picture/theme oriented, and would be hard to publish lots of written work on there, although I would probably use it purely for the fact it’s free, easy to use, and looks good.

The other service I looked at was 4ormat. This was similar to Moonfruit as it was too, very design orientated, and seemed slightly more so than Moonfruit, with a lot of its focus being on colourful design and integrating pictures. There wasn’t as much freedom with you being able to edit and design your own page as there is with Moonfruit, but there were a few more features such as drag and drop content capabilities, integrated SEO, no html coding required, and a specific Ipad and smartphone design. Overall however, I would use Moonfruit to create my portfolio online rather than 4ormat. 4ormat is far too picture orientated and would much more benefit a photographer or designer rather than a journalist, it is also not free and not as easy to sue as Moonfruit which also has much more design and editing capabilities. Although Mo0onfruit was better, It still needs to be easier to add text and my articles on it, as it doesn’t deal with a lot of text very well.

February 5, 2014

Week 1 – Looking at professional portfolios

For my first blog post I chose to analyse and compare 3 professional Journalists’ online portfolios in order to give me an idea as to what they look like, contain, and their general design and flair. This will inspire and help me when created my own online portfolio for the duration of this module.

The 3 portfolios I chose to look at were:

Alex Wood, Editor at tech city news
Josephine Moulds, a freelance journalist
Ciara Leeming, a freelance journalist

The basic content in all three blogs was generally the same or similar. With all 3 having or a link to it. Most also had an online copy or link to their c.v., with Ciara Leeming’s site having its own blog, Josephine’s site being updated with her latest work automatically, and Alex’s site being high tech and containing links to his social media site and his twitter posts on a timeline.

However where they differ is design, Ciara’s site is basic and pretty boring, with a traditional masthead contained links to about me, work, cv, blog etc. And seems out of date in a ultimately online, multimedia platform, social media integrated society.

Alex’s online portfolio however, is the most high tech, one-click, social media integrated site I have seen. With every link just a quick away, the homepage being a well designed, colourful page without too much but 3 basic links on it. Each link for example, ‘Editor at tech city news’, when clicked, brings forward a colourful and interactive timeline as to where he has worked and what he’s done.

The design is intriguing and engaging and definitely has a strong social media platform, with everything linked to his online presence and work, and I would want my blog to also do this, perhaps a little bit more regimented in its design, in order to make it easier to access for prospective employers. But I would definitely want quick and easy links to my work, social media profiles, and blog to be no more than a click a way, to add some of my personality in by creating an efficient and aesthetically pleasing design would be a bonus.

From analysing these professional online portfolio’s, I have decided that my portfolio MUST contain, an about me section -as finite as possible, without creating a whole page for me, preferably on the homepage to one side. Examples of my work, in a quick and easy link, with a simple easy-to-read yet well designed format, a copy of my c.v. – possibly linked to the about me section?, a link to this or my other blogs? showcasing my online presence, then a live twitter feed as well as links to my other social media profiles all in a well designed, good looking and easy to access way but also using various multimedia platforms.

Professional portfolio blog

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