Just kidding. By no means should I be considered a professional podcaster. However, I didn’t go into this one blind, afraid to listen to my own voice on recording and afraid to improvise off of a script. I went into the second podcast knowing how to correctly manage the timing for creating the episode and aware of my strengths and weaknesses: my strength being research and my weakness being editing.

For this episode, Emily was the Executive Producer and I was the Producer, so she thought of the idea to analyze The Skimm as our next podcast, which I thought was a great idea. I’ve always known about The Skimm, and I actually subscribe to them because so many of my friends told me to, but they’ve always been somewhat of a pest in my inbox that I just delete every morning without actually reading. I also never knew the background behind it, so I went into this research with limited knowledge. I began by researching the history/background of The Skimm, its origin story, statistics, and then I delved into articles that reviewed it and/or interviewed the founders. Emily then expanded on my research and found information we were missing, and then we collaborated on an outline.

Our recording was extremely efficient and quick. We read/improvised off of the detailed outline we made, and aside from a few slip ups here and there with the occasional “um” and some mispronunciations, we recorded the entire podcast under an hour. Very few edits had to be made because every time we messed up during our recording, we just re-recorded that section, so nothing needed to be cut out.

Reflecting on both podcast episodes, I’m happy that I succeeded in producing something that I wasn’t so comfortable with; however, I still would prefer doing other assignments than creating a podcast. I did learn how to use basic tools on GarageBand, but my research skills or analytic skills didn’t develop in any way. I think I worked really well with Emily on the collaboration side of things, and we were able to delegate work appropriately based on our strengths.

I perceive myself as a surface-level user of new media and technology, meaning that I can participate in most mediums and add content, but I can’t delve into the service and the technicalities and create something myself. A lot of this narrative reiterated what I said in my the past one, but incorporating the ideas of Jenkins and the Mozilla web literacy map made me see a pattern of web literacy skills that I use in my day-to-day technology use.

The Odyssey has been a new media platform that I’ve always been pretty outspoken about. It’s been a constant Facebook newsfeed pop-up, as some of my Facebook friends are writers, and others share their friends’ articles. The first few articles I read I judged pretty harshly as the content was superficial and the writing was painfully ungrammatical. Therefore, when Emily and I decided to focus our podcast on The Odyssey Online, my nerves were further suppressed.

To prepare for recording, we did thorough research in addition to combining our own opinions, which we then formatted into a detailed outline. After we typed up the outline, we went through and discussed it in order to add some more talking points. Heavily preparing was really important going into recording, as we didn’t feel comfortable going in blind and then recording an improvised conversation. This did lead to some of the podcast sounding a little too formal, but the improvised talking points here and there did balance it out. Because we prepared so much, the editing process was surprisingly easy and quick.

In terms of assessing my work with a podcast versus my essay writing, I’d say you can’t really compare the two since they’re so drastically different. I feel as though essays are much more technical, require more time and editing, and I personally feel a lot more comfortable with writing; I have a much easier time articulating my thoughts on paper rather than verbally. It was also different because this podcast was collaborative, whereas essays are typically individualized. On the other hand, I prepared for this podcast the same way I prepare for essays, which is researching extensively on the topic and then putting my research into an outline.

A skill that was further developed in doing the podcast was thinking on my feet. I have some experience with this in journalistic interviews in high school, but it is definitely a skill that I’d like to work on more. The podcast made me progress as a learner in terms of collaboration. In past projects, I had a difficult time trusting my partner to do the work; however, I trusted Emily to do her part and I think we both complemented each other’s working styles.

Honestly, I didn’t set such high standards for myself for my first podcast because I felt that just creating one in the first place was a huge hurdle of mine. Going forward, however, I’d like to consider perhaps conducting an interview in the podcast or including an outside guest speaker. I think Emily and I did a great job of expanding The Web We Weave series as we offered a criticism of a new media platform. I’m happy that I was able to do a school project on something that I’ve been passionate about, and that my opinion will actually be heard. I’ve learned a lot about podcasts in general and about myself as a student through the creation of this episode, and I’m interested to see how I create the next episode.

I didn’t realize the effect technology had on my childhood until I brainstormed through an old-fashioned web where I mapped out all of my favorite computer games and at what stage in my life I played them, ranging from Webkinz to Brickbreaker. I also discussed the evolution of my communication and the shift in knowing my friends’ home numbers to now sending them a short text message. Pre-writing allowed me to notice details about my relationship with computers that I stored in the past and forgot about over time.

In this narrative, I did not use any new media strategies, however perhaps later in the class I will incorporate new media into my writing.

(http://giphy.com/gifs/HteV6g0QTNxp6)

I’m not sure whether this image would be good as the banner or the cover image, but it is the first site that popped into my mind when we thought of the title for our podcast.

New Media Writing perfectly embodies the two fields that I’m interested in studying: English and Media Studies. However, it also incorporates one of the biggest challenges I have to face as a millennial living in 2016: technology. You’d think that as someone who grew up with a gameboy and then graduated to a cell phone pretty quickly, I’d know a thing or two about technology; unfortunately, I’m as good at using the computer as my baby boomer mother.

My feelings about technology are depicted in the image I chose as my badge for this class. I wanted to use an emoji because emojis are surface-level images that convey what people are thinking or feeling, and my experience with technology is pretty surface-level. I chose the confused boy emoji to portray myself, despite the fact that I’m a girl, because I think that the emoji is confused but thoughtful, which is how I see myself. Even though I’m not the most comfortable with technology, I’m eager to learn and perhaps become someone who is savvy as I learn throughout the semester.

(http://www.readunwritten.com/2015/04/02/meaning-behind-10-confusing-emojis/)