This is our second week of classes (excluding the first week which was just system management) in the New Media program at BCIT. Over the past few days, I have learnt quite a bit. In particular, Mak, our Photoshop instructor, taught us scanning and resolution. He taught us how to transfer images from it’s original size to a larger size or smaller size canvas in Photoshop or how to calculate the proper size for whatever resolution (ppi) you are creating your image in (how many pixels in length and width the canvas should be.) He taught us this method so that we don’t make the mistake of printing out our images from Photoshop and having it come out smaller than what we imagined when it comes to creating pieces for our portfolio or homework. I thought that this was quite interesting and helpful. Speaking of Mak, he was also my composting (for the program Discreet Combustion) instructor when I was taking the digital animation course. It’s nice to have a familiar face in class. He is a great instructor! He really knows his stuff and he teaches the programs very thoroughly!
In information architecture, we learnt about what information architects do (map out websites whilst being considerate of the users in regards to navigation, labelling, organization, etc.) Ron, our teacher, showed us some intersting statistics about which countries in the world use the internet the most, China being the leading country that uses it the most. It’s crazy how the internet has evolved so quickly over the past years. It has gone from the ”old internet” being more static and having simple HTML to having YouTube, Skype, Facebook, eLearning, and so much more all online at the user’s convenience. With our internet now, we pretty much don’t need to leave the house to entertain ourselves; we can socialize, learn, and entertain ourselves with the internet. Ron also showed us some videos on YouTube (from CommonCraft) about how to use Twitter, Wikki, and Delicious. I think I may have to use Wikki when planning events and trips with my friends (we are very disorganized people and we cannot keep track of our emails, let alone check our emails on a daily basis.) We also learnt about the types of websites there are –advocate, promotional, eCommerce, content sites, portals, and personal websites. Did you know that Google pays $1.6 billion for YouTube and Facebook is valued at 15 billion? Wow. Who knew that Facebook and YouTube could cost so much?
