ICT GCSE Major Project : A Media magazine aimed at teenagers in the school

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Daisy Goulding

Year 10

ICT GCSE Major Project

Analysis

Project Title: A Media magazine aimed at teenagers in the school

The Situation:

Ras Al Khaimah is a small emirate (equivalent to a county) based in the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East. It is about 80 km from Dubai, a neighboring emirate with an entertaining and lively capital.

Ras Al Khaimah is a small city with all types of nationalities such as English, Pakistani, Egyptian and of course Arabs living there. It has few public facilities, only last year was Ras Al Khaimah’s first shopping centre built which has a cinema, restaurants and a variety of shops and there are few other entertainment’s in Ras Al Khaimah, so many people travel to Dubai to be able to fill up their social lives. Most people worship Islam, and there are a numerous number of mosques in the city, there is one church in Ras Al Khaimah where Christians can go to worship.

Ras Al Khaimah English Speaking School or RAKESS is a moderately sized school, based in Ras Al Khaimah (in which you must be able to speak English), which has around 350 students in all of primary and secondary.

It is a private school for both boys and girls, and has many facilities including a swimming pool, tennis courts and 4 fully equipped I.C.T labs.

   

One of the problems of Ras Al Khaimah is its social life, it only has one shopping centre and many people have to entertain themselves by visiting cinemas and buying P.C games and videos. There are few entertainment magazines which may include reviews, music pages and what’s on in the United Arab Emirates and none for Ras Al Khaimah. Mostly the cinema viewers and people who are interested in that topic are teenagers, and many students would think it would be good if a friendly, local magazine was produced for the school, outlining reviews, and social activities happening to refrain people form going into boredom. One magazine which used to be produced for the school called the Rakess Update which did outline some reviews and cinema interests, but it was unprofessional, and did not contain a great deal of information useful to teenagers and other ages and was not up to date so after a while the magazine was cancelled and a school web-site was made instead. The Rakess Update to be able to be more successful it needed:

  • Better Promotion
  • More Organisation
  • More Efficiency
  •  More Communication

If these things were added to this magazine then the students would have preferred it and it would be have been a lot more successful and popular.

The Problem:

The problem with the current updates on the entertainment was the Rakess Update was unprofessional and unorganised and did not include a great deal of information that was relevant to the student body of RAKESS.

The Rakess Update did have pages that were colourful and interesting with topics that were varying in public interest, but having spoken to students what the Rakess Update really needed was:

  • A wide range of information that benefited everyone
  • More organisation, there was no general layout or template of its cover or pages.
  • More promotion. No adverts were made to promote their magazine.
  • More efficiency as most people producing the update were new to computers and it took a long time to be able to produce a decent article for the Update.
  • More communication. There was no interaction with the students about what could be in the magazine.
  • It needed a basic topic or structure. The magazine included all types of topics from racing cars to cooking. It needed one topic, which it could expand and explore.

The Existing System:

At the moment there is nothing about entertainment for RAKESS and no local magazine for Ras Al Khaimah but there are a few magazines based in Dubai, that give info about entertainment but nothing interesting and lively for RAKESS. The old Rakess Update did have a few pages about entertainment and media but nothing substantial and in depth for the student’s use.

The people that ran the Rakess Update were one Year 9 class, as they were not doing their GCSE’s and were the oldest students considered able to run the Update. It was always released at Christmas and each student would produce a few pages about a reasonable subject of their choice. The subjects were very varied and never were involved in one topic. The topics could range from Harry Potter to cooking and it was quite unbalanced. Even though it was a good idea to try and create a magazine that tried to create topics for everyone, the magazine was unbalanced and none of the subjects were expanded so there would only be one page for games, cookery, movies and it did not provide enough information relevant for the user. I feel that I need to improve and expand my new system from the Rakess Update to create a system that is very informative and involves one subject: media that is more beneficial to the user.

There are three main magazines that can be counted for as existing systems; I have added Public Magazines such as the U.A.E’S local entertainment magazines, which are meant for the public but can be counted as existing systems, even though I have not added processes and storage to the Public Magazines as part of the existing system as I cannot get this information which is usually private and not stored on the Web.

The School Newsletter:

Join now!

The School newsletter is an existing system as it is a newsletter outlining what’s going on in the school. It’s very basic and is in black and white format, and does not give in-depth information, just simple facts. It does not go out of the school, as I intend to do, but does inform people of current happenings around school. The School is published weekly and it contains the following items as the sample newsletter I have put in the analysis shows:

  • Information on people who have won awards, and commendations
  • Events that are upcoming
  • News from ...

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