Podcast Assessment

So...my podcast...

Let me start with the positive, which is what I learned by creating this podcast. I feel like I have learned how to work with GarageBand well enough to bring it into a classroom. Specifically, I learned how to manipulate the different tracks and synchronize the music, vocal track and images I used. In terms of my images, the picture I found of Bill Gates makes me laugh everytime, and I am always happy to be able to include pictures of my family in anything I do. (Chris, to answer your question, only two of the pictures are of my family. I got all my pictures from GoogleImages and Flickr. Jack, the Friedman photo was from Flickr - and there were LOTS to choose from.)

This assignment pushed me to think outside of the box (or 8.5 x 11 piece of paper) and convey a mood with images and music in an unfamiliar medium. I really had the hardest time with the "create a mood" aspect of the assignment because I was concerned that if I chose images or songs that had a certain connotation to me, they may not have the same connotation for my viewers/audience. Jack and Chris hit on this with a particular image (a boy handcuffed to a desk) that I thought would symbolize a sense of today's high school students being restricted by the "digital immigrants" they are being taught by. My idea didn't translate. Perhaps if I had more explicit comments at that point in the podcast, this wouldn't have been a problem.

Things I wasn't happy about - not being able to fade in and out of images and music. I didn't fill the podcast with images all the way through. In hindsight, I don't know why I thought this was okay, but looking at the podcast now, it makes things choppy and disrupts any feeling of mood.

What would I change? More images; use the vocal track to direct the mood more clearly; change my voice (pace and tone);

I'm very glad to have had this experience, and I feel that I could use this in my classroom (a refreshing take on oral presentations or an identity box project). This class, in and of itself, has been a great "world-flattener" for me, and this assignment has definitely been a big part of that.