Project #1: Project Podcast

Wow! The first project of the year and boy does it feel good to be back in school! After a long several months of online school being back in the classroom with my teachers and piers is so much better. I found it difficult to feel motivated and engaged with school online so it’s a big deal for me. Enough about being back in school though, let’s talk about the project. I started off my first five weeks for this project with Ms. Willemse. Almost right from the start I learnt that I would be making a podcast. Before this project I had actually never even listened to a podcast so I wasn’t that exited when Ms. Willemse said that’s what we would be doing. But as the project really progressed I started to like the podcast idea more. Not only where podcasts difficult to make engaging and to edit, I was also offered a lot of freedom in my podcast topic. I learnt that to make my podcast I would have to understand identity, how to edit and I would also have to improve my writing skills. All these things really got me exited so let me show you some of the details of how I finally got to making my podcast trailer and answering the driving question: How might I create a podcast trailer that informs, inspires and entertains?

For the launch of the Project Podcast we focused a lot on two things, identity and what makes an effective oral story. I’ll start with identity. 

We started by defining what identity was. I was spilt of into a group where we worked as a team and combined our brain power to come up with the ideal definition for identity. At first I couldn’t understand why we had to do this. I thought just looking up the definition would be faster. But I realized that by having to create my own definition it made me think a lot more about what identity meant to me which helped me later on in the project. Having to create my own definition for identity also gave me an opportunity to demonstrate my understanding of an important competency to my teachers, being a creative communicator. Not only did I have to create an understanding of what identity was, I also had to use my technology (in this case through writing) to clearly communicate what I understood. This is not an easy thing to do.

What is identity?

Creating an effective oral story isn’t easy either and I had to work hard to begin to master this skill. Right off the bat I had to find out what things I needed to add to my oral story to make it great. Through lots of in class discussions and listening to podcasts I started to get a general idea of what I needed to do. Things like having an expressive and clear voice were all important. We then got to choose a topic and create a bullet point script for what we might say when telling this kind of oral story. We then actually recorded ourselves in class telling this story. Doing this exercise really helped me prepare for the podcast trailer I would need to create in the future and learn from the mistakes I made in this milestone.

Next we worked on our writing skills. I had to create a plan for my podcast and pitch it to a friend. This was very challenging to get right. I had to make lots of revisions to my podcast plan before it seemed like it would be engaging and fit with my identity. We learnt a lot about making music and cover art for our podcasts as well. I worked with Liam in our in class revision exercise for this project. We worked really well as a team and gave great feedback to each other which helped me create my final podcast plan. With the podcast plan and art approved by Ms. Willemse the next step was to start making my trailer!

Partner feedback sheet

We started making our podcast trailer by first making a draft of what it would be. this draft included a written copy of the trailer as well as a rough audio recording. After this was approved I went home and made any final improvements before the charette protocol. This was an in class exercise in a group of four where we played our podcast trailer drafts before getting pier critique. Once again my group did a great job but we decided to record our feedback live instead of writing it down. Although this may have been more difficult for Ms. Willemse to evaluate I think it allowed me to show my ability to communicate feedback in both writing (with Liam earlier) and in audio. 

And after doing all this work and adding a few final touches I was finally finished my podcast trailer! 

The official trailer for the facts, fails and finest of MTB:

This also brings me to my answer for the driving question. I can create a podcast that informs, inspires and entertains by including and understanding my identity, using good oral storytelling techniques, fitting music and good audio editing. 

In conclusion this was such a challenging and entertaining first project for the year. My understanding of identity, music, storytelling and editing all improved so much thanks to what I did. I think you’ll agree that I showed I understand how to be an effective creative communicator too. I can’t wait to see what I’ll be doing next with my newly created podcast. Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you later.