Helloooo people!

Welcome back to my blog, it’s Amelia here.

How is everyone during these strange times? I hope you’re well, and staying safe. Alas, school must go on, even through this epidemic. I’m not complaining, though— I had a great time making our latest project, which I’m about to tell y’all all about.

In light of our current situation, this project was about COVID-19. Which you probably assumed. But that’s not all… our assignment required us to choose certain countries from around the world, and create a podcast about their reaction to COVID-19. We could pretty much choose whatever we liked, and had a fair amount of freedom with this unit, due to the restrictions of online school and just general chaos of life at the moment. Definitely an interesting and new experience. Gladly, being in this Hum 10 class with my tech-savvy peers, it was a little easier to transition to online learning, and I already had the necessary tools to create podcasts (ex. Check out my previous podcasts), so I was off on the right foot.
Here is a link to my podcast, right off the bat if you wanna take a listen:

I chose to do my podcast on Ukraine, Russia and COVID-19. The driving question that I came up with for my research was:

How has the ongoing power struggle between Russia and Ukraine impacted Ukraine’s reaction to Covid-19?

LAUNCH!

We started off this unit by listening to a couple podcasts about COVID itself, to introduce ourselves to more podcasts and learn more about the virus itself. Here is a graphic I created based off of two podcasts I listened to, both from the series Coronavirus: Fact vs. Fiction.

I also did some general research about Political Ideology, another theme in this unit. I created a chart of a couple countries and their COVID stats right here:

Politics + COVID Chart

We have previously touched on political ideologies, but it was a necessary refresher for everyone, and we talked about how the different ideologies present in modern governments affected their reactions to COVID. We also had the chance to take a political compass test, which I did. Here are my results:

Building Knowledge

After toiling over what countries I wanted to choose, I decided on Ukraine, and partially Russia.
I can’t say quite what attracted me to choose these countries. One factor could be that I have been learning a lot about my family history recently, and I discovered that my mother’s family has some Ukrainian in it. Here is a picture of my great-great Ukrainian uncle:

Having these family ties has made me much more interested in Ukrainian history. On top of that, I’ve never really had the chance to learn much of the history behind the Soviet countries in general. So, I thought, why not!

I decided to mainly focus on Ukraine, and talk about how the issues between Ukraine and Russia have impacted how Ukraine has reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m also not sure where I found the idea to study this particular angle on the situation. Mainly, after doing some initial research, it became evident to me that Ukraine’s political unrest was nothing near what I expected; though I can’t say I expected anything either, as I knew very little of the current politics in the country. I was just surprised at how much political turmoil was overcoming Ukraine and affecting the country’s government, and made the connection between the reaction to COVID, and the unrest in Ukraine (which I discuss in the podcast). Where does Russia come in? Right in the fact that this unrest is directly stemming from Russo-Ukrainian political and cultural issues.

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Having established this, I began to record my research, and found myself writing a fairly linear timeline of the history between Russia and Ukraine. When I came out the other end with a conclusion, my research paper turned out to be very… extensive, to say the least. I knew that I was going to have to cut down on some of the information I collected, but it had been very interesting to simply learn about Russian and Ukrainian history, so I decided to keep my bulky research for the time being.

Develop and Critique

Script

So… after having all of my research approved, it was time to turn this into a script. I didn’t end up having to make too many changes on my first draft, besides adding some dialogue and formalizing some stuff. I cut down a bit of the unnecessary/extra information, and handed it in as it was.
Upon receiving feedback, I realized… it was just too wordy. So I cut down even more, and managed to create a more succinct paper, that got the point across without any extra effort. Still, my podcast ended up being a bit lengthy, but I am pretty proud of the script I came up with, and how I managed to fit such extensive history into a short time slot.

Recordingggg Time!

So.. finally, after editing my script, I could record the darn podcast. I used GarageBand and my headphones, but I think it turned out pretty good. I added an introduction with news clips about Ukraine and COVID, and then added several musical interludes to space out the bulk of the podcast.
Of course, again, check it out here:

Present and Reflect

A Lil Graphic

For my cover of the podcast, I created a graphic:

Core Competencies

Create: What literacy skills am I using to write, speak, and represent in the texts I create?

A huge part of this podcast was research. Research can be difficult, with finding the right sources and translating them into your own words. So, I’d say a huge literacy skill that I used was one of translating texts into my own words. I also had to practice writing for a recording, including relaxed, Podcast-style chatting, while still conveying an academic message and proposition on an issue. Essentially, throughout this research, I was also formulating and backing up my driving idea, which began as an opinion of my own.

Cause + Consequence: Who or what influenced events to occur and what were the consequences of those events?

Identifying the cause and consequence of my chosen topic was what drove this podcast forwards. The history between Russia and Ukraine was the cause, the consequence being Ukraine’s hindered reaction to the virus. I expanded on this idea throughout my podcast, and explained cause and consequence quite linearly. I believe this made my podcast easier to follow, and this competency easily identified.

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If you took the time to read this, or even just check out my podcast, thank you so much! I am very proud of the effort that I put into this podcast. I did my thorough research, which was extremely helpful in establishing a large basis for me to narrow down as I carried on with the project. I’m also proud of my recording and music quality— in my previous podcasts, I did not use as many musical interludes, which I now realize are essential, and give the podcast a professional feel.

If I were to change something about this podcast, I would probably attempt to make it a little shorter, just to see if I could connect more to the point. I would also include an interview, which I wanted to do, but ended up having to sacrifice for the sake of shortening the podcast length.
Now that I’m here, finished, I thank my past self for the challenge of this topic and research, which paid off, as I thoroughly enjoyed this unit. I’m looking forward to whatever else we will explore during our time of distance learning and beyond.

Thanks for reading my blog post… come back later for more content if you dare.