Friday 19th November

Myself and charlotte spend the lesson photo shopping the pictures of my front door, and trying to put text onto the mock newspaper, but found it difficult as we both have insufficiant knowledge of using text on photoshop.

Holly- Updated the blog and had input with charlottes editing of the photo.

Charlotte- Cropped and edited out the door bell on the picture, and also attempted to add text to the newspaper, even though the first attempt was in successful, we will seek further help from our teacher, and get the end result we're looking for.

Monday 15th November

The begining of the double lesson we used to start the lay out of the front page of our newspaper on the schools computers.

We then borrowed a camera from the phography department and took pictures of my front door with the mock news paper stuck out of the letter box for editing during our next

timetabled media lesson, as thats the next time we are both available.

Monday 15th November

Charlotte - We are carrying on with our second ancillary task - the poster to advertise our newspaper. We have decided to use Microsoft publisher as The fireworks programme was too difficult to use, and we are pushed for time. I am updating the blog, aswell as going back to our website to finish, while Holly starts the structure of our advertisement.

Holly - I am creating a logo for our advertisement aswell as a basic structure for it. We are each doing an ancillary task in order to complete our project quicker.

Tuesday 9th November

Holly - I spend the double lesson catching up with our blog. Through focusing on the ancillary tasks we fell behind with updating our blog, but as the first ancillary task has been handed in, (not fully completed yet, as we want to re - edit the layout and content of the articles and pictures before the final hand in of the completed project) we felt we really needed to catch up with the blog before we forgot what tasks we completed on which days.

Charlotte - I spent the lesson researching into newspaper layouts in preparation for when we put the material we already have all together in the form of our 'finished article'.
(Pictures of local and global newspapers and inside pages.)

In order to be prepared for our actual project - the newspaper, we needed to think about a target audience, as this was something we hadn't taken into consideration. We didn't want to make the newspaper aimed at youths, as it isn't typical for a large majority of that particular audience to be interested/read the local newspaper. So we decided to aim our newspaper for young adults, around aged 18 and over as the features in our newspaper will attract this age group.
We had to think about what sort of articles we were going to include in our newspaper. Headlines are what draws us into reading a certain article - they have to attract their audience. Their key function is to convey the 'gist' of a story in a few words. If the headline is strong, the this will not only attract the reader, but will also more importantly make them want to purchase it.

Friday 22nd October

Charlotte - Today is the last day of term, so me and Holly got some research done as we both are unable to do anything during the holidays. I researched into the possible photoshop programmes to find the best software to superimpose our newspaper title - 'Dunstable Times' onto the already existing newspaper to get the best match in colour and to make the plain paper look of the same quality as the real newspaper. As I have a broader knowledge of photoshop software than Holly does due to taking A level Photography and have used the programme before. We agreed that I could use my skills to improve the poster and make it look it's best.


Holly - Having brainstormed poster ideas - I came up with the idea of our newspaper sticking out of a letter box with the title clearly showing, and the launch date of the newspaper at the bottom in light writing against a dark background. We agreed that using normal A4 or A3 plain paper with our title printed onto it, it wouldn't look convincing enough as a real newspaper, so I came up with the idea of getting a real newspaper, rolled up and covering the existing title with plain paper so we can superimpose our title onto the newspaper.

Monday 18th October

Today is the deadline for our first ancillary task. We explained to our teacher that due to initial complications with the programming for the website, we have provided a basic website temporarily, and are intending to go back and complete it to a professional standard. We print screened all the pages of the website and attatched them all to a word document to hand in, and will attatch a copy to one of our blog posts to make the blog a little more interesting, and to visually show our progress.

Friday 15th October

Charlotte - Finished the articles on the websites' home page and hyperlinked events page. We have written the sufficient amount for the articles, but once we have the 2nd ancillary task completed and the newspaper itself fully underway, we will go back and review all of the work all of the work contributed to this project and ensure everything has been completed to its full potential.

Monday 11th October

Holly - Only a couple of the pictures we want for the website have been put on. The particular story about the guiding cenenary needs pictures of the flower bed that's been planted in Priory Gardens and of the guides celebrating the organisations 100th birthday. I haven't been able to get the photographs yet as I need to write letters to the parents of the girls for being able to legally use the pictures within this project and due to focusing on the project, simply haven't had time.

Friday 1st October

Together during our double media lesson on Friday, as the school system won't allow us in the freewebs website, myself and charlotte went to my house to use my laptop, as we felt we were wasting our time staying in school.
We named the appropriate tabs on the homepage, wrote first draft article tasters for the homepage, (which will be re - written and put in the final copy of the newspaper), wrote a list of pictures we needed to take ourselves to put on the website that relate to our headlines and attempted to insert hyperlinks into the HTML boxes provided so we could have moving scroll boxes and a weatherbox, but the website we are using isn't compatible with the particular HTML codes we were trying to use.

(Pictures of all web pages and list pictures needed for pages)

Friday 24th September

After researching into the website 'Freewebs', to make sure it had the basic structure required to build a news website (as using Dreamweaver, we were expected to create tabs, newsboxes,templates and everything else from scratch).

Charlotte - We got going on our Freewebs website and were relieved as it was alot easier to use, giving us more time to focus on the articles and content within the website itself. We got a basic template with a colour scheme that looked professional and suited its genre. We came up with the name 'Dunstable Times' although this is temporary as it is a working title, brainstorming for an official name, however this was not a priority.

Friday 17th September

Holly - After a lot of discussion, myself and Charlotte felt we could not continue using the Dreamweaver programme to complete our project work, as we had a limited time until our deadline, as we simply didn't know how to use the software.


Charlotte - We decided the Dreamweaver programme was difficult to carry out from scratch and we felt we were just wasting time trying to create it when we appeared to be getting no where. So we decided to use the website builder 'Freewebs' as it was more accessible and alot easier to use. We both knew what to do and how to use it. Although it was the easier option, it was our best chance of creating a functional website.

Monday 13th September

Due to other commitments we could not meet up from the 7th September - 13th September to do our website. It also didn't help that we can't access the Dreamweaver programme used to create our website from home, as we always had to be in school to use it.

Tuesday 7th September

Charlotte - With alot of help from David we managed to get the boxes and html codes in the right places and the homepage started to come together.

Holly - We encountered some problems with the colour schemes and images to put on the website and as a background we couldn't agree on what would portray the feel of a real, professional news website. Eventually we decided to leave the image side of things and get on with structuring and writing the articles. Coming up with a name for the newspaper was difficult, however we settled on 'Dunstable Times'.

Monday 6th September

We started to create our homepage, using the basic techniques to make it look like a professional news website. Although it started coming together, we found it extremely difficult as our knowledge of html codes were minimal, especially where to put them. We did some research on some help websites that allowed you to use some provided codes to create certain effects; however it became extremely frustrating as none of the codes seemed to be compatible with our website. Our classmate David who specializes in I.T had far more knowledge than us and helped us where he could, but he also had personal projects to be getting on with so we tried to do it ourselves to the best of our ability.

(Picture of home page of website)