First Newscast
February 11, 2009 — Vanessa RileyLast week, we created our first Vistas newscast. It went pretty well. They all did a great job! We need to focus on the following elements:
1. Reading out loud
2. Editing music/Mashing audio together
3. Learning who our audience is – is our school *really* interested in news that is happening in Italy?
The first one went out pretty well. Since I was in Austin, I don’t really know how many people listened to it, but when i came back on Monday, we critiqued our own podcast. We were pretty honest. It was too long and too boring. We almost couldn’t get through the whole thing. If *WE* couldn’t get through it, how can we expect listeners to listen?
So now, we are changing things up. It will be a news report just for Vistas with the intent to move into video production. The audio element is so hard to do alone. I say that my students know their audience, but did I really know MY audience? I’m going to HAVE to put a visual element.
I’m really going to have to start pushing the screen record feature for this class to reach the visual learners. I’ll still be using the great recording equipment; I’ll just use MovieMaker for now. I think that my needs will soon outgrow MovieMaker. That’s what seems to happen. I started out with Photostory, then went to MovieMaker, and now am looking at other software. It seems to be the logical step – baby steps. Baby steps are safe. If you had told me three years ago that I’d be working with professional audio equipment, I would have shrugged it off. But the baby steps taught me how to be comfortable, even when I got the mixing board (that I had NO business with).
I think I can still use the simple podcasting for my own use for test reviews and such, but I will still advise my students to use their notes and class assignments during the podcast.
