AS Foundation  Portfolio in Media
The purpose of this  unit is firstly to assess your ability to plan and construct media products  using appropriate technical and creative skills; secondly to assess your  application of knowledge and understanding in evaluating your own work, showing  how meanings and responses are created; and finally to assess your ability to  undertake, apply and present appropriate research.  The unit requires you to  engage with contemporary media technologies, giving you the opportunity for the  development of skills in these technologies.
This is a  coursework unit, internally assessed and externally moderated.  You will produce  a media artefact in response to the brief set.  You will also show appropriate  evidence of research and planning.  The task provides progression from a  pre-production, preliminary exercise to a more fully realised piece in the same  medium.  This means that skills development will be assessed, as well as a final  finished piece.
Design Brief
Preliminary  exercise: using DTP and an image  manipulation program, produce the front page of a new school/college magazine,  featuring a photograph of a student in medium close-up plus some appropriately  laid-out text and a masthead.  Additionally you must produce a mock-up of the  layout of the contents page to demonstrate your grasp of the  program.
Main  task: the front page, contents and  double page spread of a new music magazine.
All images and text must be  original and produced by you.You must have a minimum of FOUR  images.
Marking  Criteria
The unit is marked  out of 100: 20 marks for the presentation of the planning and research; 60 marks  for the construction; 20 marks for the evaluation.
Research and  planning and the evaluation must all be presented electronically. In your case  your will be each create a blog that records your planning and research  processes and then provides an evaluation of the finished portfolio.
