Learning Goal: I’m working on a writing project and need a sample draft to help me learn.
This week you will work with a public genre—podcasts. You will create a brief podcast (2-3 minutes) in the style of a StoryCorps Podcast. This will require to you prepare questions and interview someone in your life. You will have the option of revising and including this podcast as one of the three genres in your Multigenre Research Project, so keep your MGRP topic in mind when starting the assignment. Follow these detailed instructions to complete this assignment:
- Create a brief podcast (2-3 minutes) in the style of a StoryCorps podcast. Their mission statement says: “StoryCorps’s mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world.� Like the podcasts on the StoryCorps website and digital archive, your podcast should consist of an interview with someone in your life—ideally someone with a unique perspective on history, current events, American culture, or life in general.
- Choose an interviewee with whom you have a close relationship. This can be a parent, sibling, child, friend, or colleague. In any case, in order to draw personal stories out of your interviewee, you will need to build on familiarity and trust.
- Listen to some StoryCorps podcasts to get a sense of what makes a good story.
- Plan your questions ahead of time. See the link to StoryCorps’s “Great Questions� page (storycorps.org/participate/great-questions/) to help you get started. Come to your interview prepared with more questions than you think you will have time to cover, since it is always better to have too many questions than too few. You may give the interviewee the questions ahead of time.
- Practice recording ahead of time: Figure out what device/equipment you will be using, and test it out in the space you will be using. I recommend the “audio-only� feature of Kaltura Capture programs like Anchor.fm or Descript.com will also work. Figure out how close you need to be to the microphone, how to limit background noise, and so on. Kaltura Capture is a video and audio recording tool embedded in ulearn. If you are new to Kaltura, here’s a user guide to help you get started.
- It’s okay to record up to 5 minutes’ worth of interview if it takes a while for your interviewee to get to the “good stuff,� or in other words to warm up to talking about what you might consider the most valuable information to share with your audience. If you choose to include your podcast in your MGRP, edit unnecessary parts during the revision process to better focus on the “real story.� A program like Pro Tools will help with editing: www.avid.com/pro-tools
- If you want to include a music track, keep it subtle. You don’t want it to dominate your story. In fact, you might consider including music, preferably without lyrics, only in the beginning and the end. If you do include music, keep in mind copyright/fair use rules.
- Listen to your finished story/podcast and write a reflection in which you consider the following: What do you like about it? What might you do differently next time? Consider sharing your reflection with your interviewee. Be sure to include the link to your podcast.
- For the assignment, attach both the reflection and the final audio file of your podcast. The reflection should be a .doc, docx, .pdf, or .rtf file. Double check the audio file to be sure it is working correctly.
Remember to revise and edit your reflection before submission.