This podcast is for the high school English course, podcasting and creative audio. This course uses student-created audio projects to meaningfully engage students in writing, reading, researching, collaborating, speaking, and audio editing.
The Second contest involves sound effects and Foley techniques--Foley Art Contest.
There are some interesting awards and prizes for teachers and students--Such as most unusual setting, best use of the splash sound (Six Sounds) and best spooky sound, best use of a kitchen utensil (Foley).
For this activity, you will leave a short voice mail message (see items 1-18 below or make your own following the rules).
The rules are--you are trying to set up a meeting at 9am on Friday with Michael and/or Jennifer Shelby (fictitious couple). You must create a scenario and leave a message with an appropriate tone. Use the comments feature on the VoiceThread video below. Your message should be shorter than 20 seconds or less than 75 words. You have to keep it clean and no 'real' personal information. You are required to leave an audio message, but feel free to add other comments in text. You cannot leave a message that has been left already (so please listen to all that are there). Here's the link to the full project.
Overview
Tone is a difficult concept to teach students even though it is one of the most fundamental aspects of our written and spoken communication. This activity will help students accurately characterize tone as readers and listeners as well as effectively use tone as writers and speakers. One reason tone is difficult to teach is because often students are formally introduced to tone when they are reading a challenging text and getting pushed for comprehension and fluency. This activity introduces tone in a way that connects the concept of tone to everyday situations and invests the students as readers, writers, and speakers of different tones. It can be done as a stand-alone activity or before or during the study of tone in a poem, short story, or novel.
Activity: Reading
All of the messages below are voice mails left for Jennifer and Michael Shelby. All of the messages request the same thing--a meeting for 9pm on Friday.
1) From a boss who wants to see an employee who is chronically late. Michael, We need to meet. I’ll expect you in my office at 9am sharp on Friday morning.
2) From a friend who wants to apologize. Oh, Jennifer. I really need to talk to you. I hope you’ll listen to me. Can we meet? Friday? Around 9 in the morning? I’ll bring the coffee.
3) From a teacher who wants to see the parent of a student who seems troubled lately. Hello, Ms. Shelby. This is Mr. Ross, Johnny’s homeroom teacher. I was hoping we could meet. Your son is doing OK in class, but I was concerned about his mood lately and wanted to talk to you about it. Let me know if we can meet. Is 9am on Friday good for you? You can contact me on my cell 311 555-2368.
4) From an aluminum siding salesman who wants to show a homeowner your product. Hello, Mr Shelby, I’m Ralph Bellabue from Armorall Siding. I’ve got a great new product—perfect for your house, and we’re running a sale this month. I’ll be in your neighborhood, and I’d love to stop by and give you some information that I think you’ll find valuable. Let me know if 9am on Friday is a good time for you. You can contact me at 311 555-2368.
Think about these questions-- How would you describe the tone? How does the tone relate to the purpose and audience? * What words, phrases and punctuation convey the tone? How would you say each of the messages?
Activity: Creating a Message
You too want to set up a meeting at Friday at 9 am with "Jennifer" or "Michael," the fictional couple who we are communicating to. Again, The facts of this message will be the same—meeting, Friday, 9 am—but you must change your tone based on the situation. For this activity you will be leaving a voice mail. You do not have to give all of the information about the meeting on the recording….only enough to set up the meeting. You can make up details such as names and places. Just keep the message to less than 20 seconds/or 75 words. Think of the words, phrases, punctuation when you write and then the vocal inflections when you speak. This all creates your tone. Create a message for a 9 am Friday meeting based on these scenarios:
5) You are a very wealthy adult who wants to surprise your mother and father (Jennifer and Michael) with the gift of a brand new car.
6) You are a police detective who needs to interview a suspect in a major crime.
7) You are a person who crashed into a parked car and now you have to call the owner (this is the right thing to do, and there were witnesses).
9)You are a lawyer with some bad news for your client that you cannot say over the phone.
10) You are a doctor with some great medical news for your patient that you cannot say over the phone.
Creative BONUS
How would…
11) A person in distress leave the message
12) A lonely person leave the message
13) A bitter person leave the message
14) A surprised person leave the message
15) An optimistic person leave the message
16) A person who was infatuated leave the message
17) An abrupt person leave the message
18) An Apprehensive Person leave the message
Again, feel free to make up details such as names, events, and places…but keeping the message under 20 seconds or less than 75 words.
Write it
Record it (we are using Voicethread please use the comment feature to record your "voice mail") Note--many students can use help with vocabulary to subtly and accurately describe tone and emotions. You might want to discuss and define words that describe emotions and then have them create messages based on them. Several good lists of emotions can be found at Wikipedia
This activity tackles new formats and new ways of creative expression that remix and digital media allow. Students are asked to creatively remix text, audio from speeches and broadcasts, audio from videos, and music clips in new and engaging ways.
Unlike many of the other activities and units in this course, there are few precedents or clear genres for this type of remix. Musicians, hobbyists, professional editors, and YouTube users are making up the rules as they go along.
For this activity student have to mix at least two different peices of media/primary sources from a particular time period centering on a particular theme(though an interesting twist would be to mix media on the same theme but from different time periods). The themes can be sports, fashion, politics, entertainment, almost any aspect of culture or society.
Here's a warm up example that I use as a scafolding model--the topic isbaseball of the 1930s. Students work in pairs to remix two of these three primary sources:
Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech in which he calls himself “The luckiest man on the face of this earth”
“That Sickening Smell?” http://www.youthradio.org/oldsite/fourthr/061205_airpolution.shtml Youth Radio’s Sophie Simon-Ortiz grew up in West Berkeley near a steel manufacturing plant, and she still has vivid memories of the smell that poured regularly from its smoke stacks and permeated the neighborhood. The smell is still there. So Sophie decided to find out why, after so many years and complaints by nearby residents, not much seems to have changed at all.
“The Beef” http://www.youthradio.org/oldsite/lifestyle/kcbs070715_beef.shtml In response to animal cruelty, Youth Radio’s Catlin Grey became vegan. She and her mom often stressed about what was cooking in the kitchen. She says, “I thought that my yearning for cheddar cheese and cookie dough ice cream would be my biggest challenge. But it turned out to be my mom.”
“MySpace vs. Facebook” http://www.youthradio.org/oldsite/society/kcbs071028_myspace.shtml Youth Radio reporter Leon Sykes describes his life as social networking junkie and his use of MySpace and Facebook to express himself online. “They’re like the left and right side of my brain.”
“Living with PTSD” http://www.youthradio.org/oldsite/reflections/npr051123_ptsd.shtml Jesus Bocanegra, now 23, spent 4½ years in the military, including a year as a cavalry scout in Iraq. He’s now out of the military and living with his family in the town of Elsep in south Texas. But the war is still with him, so much so that he’s been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. He shares this story.
In this project students select and mix lines from poetry with appropriate music. The theme of this mix was "nature walk."
“The smallest sprouts show there is really no death” (“A Child Said, What is the Grass” by Walt Whitman)
“Have you reckon'd a thousand acres much? have you reckon'd the earth much?” (“Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman)
“You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) “(“Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman)
“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss,” (“Evangeline” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)
“I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams.” (“Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth )
The following example was provided by Kate Mazzetti. It's an audio play based on an excerpt from Kafka's Metamorphosis. Turning a work of prose into a audio play is riddled with 'teachable moments'. Unlike Reader's Theater, the focus is not on prose fluency, so a faithful translation of the text is not required. This unit describes the creative decision a student should confront when transferring between print to audio.
Decisions such as what information should be conveyed through dialogue? through narration? through sound effects? need to be made.
Decisions on vocabulary need to be made as well. For example, in the text, the word 'fretwork' was used. Is it too obsolete to be understood and should it be replaced with 'wood work'? Should it be kept because it adds color and richness to the scene?
The historic interview project is a powerful way for students to connect to both history as well as to friends and family. It gives them a reason to talk meaningfully with a grandparent, uncle, or sister about events with both personal and historic significance.
Here are three excellent examples:
A student interviews his father about politics in India and New Jersey.
The audio tour project was developed as an authentic activity for podcasting as well as an engaging way to teach students the fundamentals of research.
Students choose a public place that has meaning to them and create an audio tour for it. They combine their personal interests and experiences with historical information and interviews with other people who had experience with or insight into the place.
Fanfiction is an trend/phenomenon/genre where fans of movies, video games, TV shows, comics create original material based on the characters and events of the entertainment that they are fans of.
Teaching with fanfiction is extremely helpful because it gives students familiar material to unleash their creativity. Student can create prequels, sequels, missing scenes, alternate universes, and retell stories from other characters' perspectives.
In this activity, students create a 'bonus' audio track for a movie. They simply instruct the listener where to cue the movie on a DVD player and then start the audio simultaneously. The student's commentary can be informational about the movie's background, about the plot, or historical significance of the scene. You can have students do 'color commentary' or 'play by play'. Here are two examples.
This one is from donnab and focuses on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
This one is from doodahpod and focuses on Mean Girls. There is an interesting use of the left/right stereo that lets a listener control the sound from the movie clip and from the commentary.
I'm giving a presentation on Tuesday October 14 at the New Jersey Association of Educational Technology--21 Projects for Student Podcasters. The ideas are generated from this course. If you attended the presentation and have any questions, please post them here.
This unit is an extension of Reader's Theater activities. Reader's Theater is a popular instructional approach in which students read a scripted version of a book or story. Readers Theater is characterized by minimal props, costumes, or sets; reading as opposed to memorizing; an inclusive approach to student participation. Readers Theater motivates students for engaging in texts and repeated readings, and improves fluency and comprehension. By adding creative elements of digital audio, you can simultaneously enhance the fluency and comprehension of the students as well as introduce new creative and meaning-making skills. This is an audio play based on a Grimm Tale, The Ungrateful Son.
Ideally, students will get a prose version of the story and then a script in made (typically with the narrator's part divided among many students).
If you want to do this or another Reader's Theater project, here are 5 pieces of music that can work well as background. Letting students vote on a musical selection for the class or choose one for group or individual productions can be a very rewarding experience. It can open up discussions on tone and atmosphere.
In the project "Poetry Walk (or Run) Remix" kids remix music and poetry to help walkers or runners enjoy their environment. It is based on the most downloaded podcast on iTunes, Podrunner. Kids have to select, record, and share lines of poetry about cities and nature. They then have to edit and remix these spoken lines with music (from ccmixter). It gives kids an authentic and engaging activity that helps them slow down and appreciate poetry, music, and their environment. Below is an audio sample.
Here’s an example of the finished product of the Poetry Walk Remix Project.
Poetry Lines Used:
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes. (“I am the People, the Mob” by Carl Sandburg)
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. (“Chicago” by Carl Sandburg)
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse. and under his ribs the heart of the people (“Chicago” by Carl Sandburg)
This is the city and I am one of the citizens, Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools. (“Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman)
For this project students interviewed someone they knew about experiences during an interesting time period or place or during an important or historic event.
This interviewee doesn't have to have been directly involved in an historic even. His or her indirect experiences--as a bystander or witness--can be just as powerful. Also, it doesn't have to be a single event. For example, living in the south during segregation or growing up on a farm can be extremely powerful interviews.
This example is a son's interview of his father about his father's political experiences in India and the United States. It was part of last semester's Podcourse (forgot to post it here), and I'm using it as an example for this semester's students.
Another good memoir here. (see Memoir Posting for more).
I've been experimenting with different ways to comment on the students' audio work. I've interjected my comments in the media reviews, but that seemed a little disruptive to the flow of their work. I'm going to stick with adding comments at the beginning and and of their work, both as a feature at this site as well as for most feedback for them.
This project allows you to create an original audio drama of a scene from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. You can create an original audio interpretation of the scene and distribute it in a legal and ethical way on the Internet. The project uses text from the public domain, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and music and sound effects with Creative Commons licenses.
I have included directions, the text of the scene, and links to audio files for music and sound effects. There are four parts to this project--the 1) The Overview, 2) The Scene, 3) The Production and 4) The Resources.
1) The Overview
For this project you will create an audio play from a scene from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. You must enact all of the voices and add music and sound effects. If you are working alone, you should decide how many Citizens there will be and create unique voices for each one. If you are working in a group, you can edit and increase the number of Citizens to accommodate your group.
At the end of the post is an example of sample of a student project.
2)The Scene
Read the following scene from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
It is the one that you will be turning into an audio play. Caesar has just been assassinated and the Roman citizens are rioting. There are very few stage directions in this scene. You must figure out and then act out in audio what is happening.
From Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 3
Enter CINNA the poet
CINNA THE POET I dreamt to-night that I did feast with Caesar, And things unlucky charge my fantasy: I have no will to wander forth of doors, Yet something leads me forth.
Enter 8-12 Citizens (only 4 have speaking parts)
First Citizen What is your name?
Second Citizen Whither are you going?
Third Citizen Where do you dwell?
Fourth Citizen Are you a married man or a bachelor?
Second Citizen Answer every man directly.
First Citizen Ay, and briefly.
Fourth Citizen Ay, and wisely.
Third Citizen Ay, and truly, you were best.
CINNA THE POET What is my name? Whither am I going? Where do I dwell? Am I a married man or a bachelor? Then, to answer every man directly and briefly, wisely and truly: wisely I say, I am a bachelor.
Second Citizen That's as much as to say, they are fools that marry: you'll bear me a bang for that, I fear. Proceed; directly.
CINNA THE POET Directly, I am going to Caesar's funeral.
First Citizen As a friend or an enemy?
CINNA THE POET As a friend.
Second Citizen That matter is answered directly.
Fourth Citizen For your dwelling,--briefly.
CINNA THE POET Briefly, I dwell by the Capitol.
Third Citizen Your name, sir, truly.
CINNA THE POET Truly, my name is Cinna.
First Citizen Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator.
CINNA THE POET I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.
Fourth Citizen Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.
CINNA THE POET I am not Cinna the conspirator.
Fourth Citizen It is no matter, his name's Cinna; pluck but his name out of his heart, and turn him going.
Third Citizen Tear him, tear him! Come, brands ho! fire-brands: to Brutus', to Cassius'; burn all: some to Decius' house, and some to Caasca's; some to Ligarius': away, go!
END
3) The Production
To produce the audio play you will need to do the following steps. You need to:
a) ENACT THE PARTS--Create unique voices for each of the five characters with speaking parts (Cinna, First Citizen, Second Citizen, Third Citizen, and Fourth Citizen). Speak all of the lines with credibility and emotion. The “voice” you use for each character should be consistent for that character throughout the scene.
How will you make each character sound unique?
How will you change their voices?
How will you remember what voice goes with what character?
How can the audio editing software help with this part?
b) ADD BACKGROUND MUSIC--Add some background music and put it where it’s appropriate (the whole scene does not need it).
Will it be fast or slow? Modern or classic?
Will the music stay the same or change over time? When will the volume be low? When will it be loud? You decide.
c) ADD SOUND EFFECTS--Add sound effects (including “sounds” of citizens without speaking parts in the scene).
What kind of street is it? Noisy?
Quiet? What kinds of sounds can give the feeling of quiet?
d) CREATE A SINGLE FILE--Create a single mp3 file with all of these elements.
4) The Resources
If you want to search yourself for sounds, you should only use audio from the sites Creative Commons Mixter for music and the Free Sounds Project for sound effects. The audio from these sites are on sliding scales of copyright. The have unique licenses that allow you to use and distribute their work that are broader than standard copyright law.
At the end of your show you MUST briefly give credit to the source of your music and sound effect.Mention the name of each audio file, the creator, and the site where you got it.
You can search yourself and use sound effects from the Free Sound Project or use one of these audio files. I have downloaded them and put them in the accompanying zipped folder.
We are starting a new semester with Podcasting and Creative Audio 1 and the new Podcasting and Creative Audio 2. We have some new projects as well as some new approaches in teaching and with the technology.
One thing that we will be doing is collaborating more on the audio projects--more student and student and more student and teacher collaborations. I'll also be using the audio editing software to give students feedback in their projects.
The students' will have rss feeds for their original podcasts, but I'll also be remixing their audio files with my feedback.
A few people have asked how I use blogger for podcasting. Here's a video that goes over the basics.
This is a good video to use if you have already created an mp3 file and want to make a podcast. If you're not sure how to make an mp3 file, use my Audacity Tutorial.
For our next project we will be creating audio tours of public places. We will be working with Google Maps to complement our podcasts. To begin, the students need to share the links to their places on our discussion board. Here are directions to do that.
