WEEK 11: Open Source Software

This week we learned all about open source software. Open source software is any piece of software "for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed with or without modification". This means that most open source software has a thriving community of developers who are constantly working to improve the software and continuously release new updates. One of the best parts about open source software is that its free. Most software that exists today has an open source equivalent, such as Microsoft Office and Open Office or Photoshop and Gimp.

Open source software is quite valuable in the telecom field as most of the required software is absurdly expensive. Final Cut Pro is nearly $1000 on its own, so any opportunity to exchange a piece of software like that for a free open source equivalent is welcomed. However there aren't any editing programs to my knowledge that are open source. There are however, open source equivalents to other production software. Final Draft, a script writing program, has an open source equivalent called Celtx.

Celtx

This is a great example of a piece of open source software designed for the video production industry. Its the open source alternative to the script writing program Final Draft and its supported by an amazing team of developers and distributed online for free.

WEEK 7: Visual Literacy

In week 7 we continued our work on Photoshop tutorial activity. I finished early so I began to work on my visual literacy Photoshop project. The visual literacy project requires us to incorporate several images into a larger image using what we've learned in Photoshop. I chose to bring the phone booth and guard into the Grand Canyon image.

Photoshop plays a large role in Telecommunications. Its used to create and edit graphics to be included in pictures and videos. However, Photoshop is nothing without a solid foundation in visual literacy. Every week I see my classmates in my telecom classes deliver technically sound productions, but completely visually illiterate. Without the ability to convey meaning in an organized and visually pleasing manner, a production, no matter how technical it is, lacks professionalism and cannot convey meaning.

TEDxDartmouth-Brian Kennedy: Visual Literacy: Why We Need It!
It's a long video, but it deals a lot with visual literacy and why its important to, well, everything. Kennedy discusses the many applications and contexts of visual literacy. He goes on to discuss the history of visual literacy before the era of literacy, beginning with cave paintings.

WEEK 6: Media and Information Literacy

Week 6 was a discussion of media, visual, and information literacy. Visual literacy is the ability to convey information through design, or

"the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image"

We began the week with a tutorial on photoshop and its many different tools. The tutorial called for us to create an image with different types of athletic shoes. Additionally we learned about the visual literacy project and saw examples from previous years.

In Telecommunications,  visual literacy is one of the main goals of every production. My major focuses almost entirely on visual literacy and telling a story through images. Being able to interpret and make sense of information presented is vital to delivering a finished product to clients.


Photoshop Tuts
I chose the above resource because it proved very useful for the visual literacy project. The site offers numerous photoshop tutorials and has helped me out of a bind on several occasions.