Editorial Report 9b

The introduction of a project is more important than people realize. Therefore, I want to give my intro some extra work:

Rough Cut Opening

Re-edited opening

1) How did the content change (even slightly - details matter!) when you re-edited it? Why do you think the content is being communicated more effectively in the re-edited version?

Well, apart from sounding significantly less awkward than in the first opening recording, I added many more details. I defined ethos, logos, and pathos and talked about how they fit into this project (which I had realized I had completely forgotten in the first try). I tried to stress the importance of these strategies. 

2) How did the form change (even slightly - details matter!) when you re-edited it? Why do you think the form is presenting the content more effectively in the re-edited version?

I added a stinger at the very beginning to inform the audience exactly what the podcast will be about within the first 20 seconds. I realized in my first attempt, it took a good minute to figure out what the podcast was even about. Then I added intro music and attempted to add some sound effects.

Editorial Report 9a

Let's work on one of my genre examples. I choose a popular article about a black hole.

Rough cut
re-edited selection of part of popular articles-black hole

1) How did the content change (even slightly - details matter!) when you re-edited it? Why do you think the content is being communicated more effectively in the re-edited version?

I integrated a quote from one of my interviews in the previous segment that I build off of in this segment about the black hole. I try to tie the quote withe the rhetorical strategies used by the author of the black hole article-the use of strategies that simplifies one's language and uses analogies that are easy to understand.

2) How did the form change (even slightly - details matter!) when you re-edited it? Why do you think the form is presenting the content more effectively in the re-edited version?

I added sound effects of a baby when I talked about the descriptions the author uses on the black hole. Did you know YouTube has entire playlists(and I mean long playlists) of babies crying? Finding my sound effects was probably the most annoying 20 minutes of my life...

Reflection on Post-Production

Project two is finally finished!! Even though it was a struggle to get it in, I am proud of the work I did.

1) What were some of the successes (or, things that went right) during this week’s process work? Explain, with evidence.

I feel the editing process was very useful. Generally, when I create rough drafts, they are tweaked a little then turned in. However, this rough draft was majorly reworked. Not only has some of the content changed, but I feel the form was completely changed. I feel like I understand better what the conventions of a podcast are, even though I started out with no knowledge about podcast making.

2) What were some of the challenges (or, things that went wrong) during this week’s process work? Explain, with evidence.

Well, I got very ill and lost my voice. This does not bode well for a project that relies on me speaking. It was my fault that I waited until Sunday morning to record (when I woke up without a voice) but college often has the habit of overwhelming its victims with more tests and lab reports than is healthy.

3) How do you think next week will go, based on your experiences this week?

Since I got behind, I am struggling not to get buried by the next project. You were completely right, once one gets behind it is very hard to catch up.

4) How are you feeling about the project overall at this point?

I'm proud of my work. I turned in the best product that I was able to. Though I know I will never become a podcaster when I grow up, I feel like my podcast was a solid first attempt.

Peer Review 9B for Grant Williams

Switching genres, I will now peer review Grant William's Project 2 Draft essay. 

Here is a link to my feedback on Grant's blog

An explanation of the peer review activity you selected for the project you reviewed 

I decided to focus on content because we all have a pretty good grasp on standard collee essay form.

An explanation of how you think you helped the author with your feedback

Often I find writing the intro to a writing project to be the hardest. Grant starts the essay immediately introducing an interviewee and not the paper itself. He definitely needs to add an intro to let the audience know the point of the project.  It would able be great if he introduced the rhetorical concepts.

An explanation of how you incorporated something from the suggested Student’s Guide readings (or any other course materials, if you’d prefer) into your feedback

Standard college esssays need intros, a body, a conclusion and a thesis. I merely pointed out which were lacking in his intro. His content was amazingly detailed and extremely well-written.

One thing about their work that you admired or think you could learn from

I loved the use of subtle descriptive language. He quotes his interviewees and adds just a single word of description that completely sets the tone of the quote and allows one to imagine exactly how it was said.

Peer Review 9A for Hannah Gardner

Now that we all have rough drafts, it is time to peer review them and make suggestions for some changes. I decided to do a peer review on Hannah Gardener's Podcast called Writing in Psychology.

Here is a link to my feedback on Hannah's blog.

An explanation of the peer review activity you selected for the project you reviewed 

I decided to focus on the form of the podcast.

An explanation of how you think you helped the author with your feedback

It seems to me that the podcast is by far the least known of the genres we are using for the class. Therefore, focusing on the form will hopefully help out the author if they were feeling lost. Also, since I am doing a podcast, analyzing someone else's project on form helps me out a lot as I can reflect on my own too.

An explanation of how you incorporated something from the suggested Student’s Guide readings (or any other course materials, if you’d prefer) into your feedback

Based on the professional podcast examples vs the fellow student podcast examples, I feel the main reason the porfessional podcast were better was due to the form. The student podcasts had great content, content that is a s deep and well researched as the professional podcasts, but the delivery was not as good. Therefore, I tried to give feeback on form so the delivery of Hannah's podcast is as great as her content.

One thing about their work that you admired or think you could learn from

I really liked how Hannah very clearly stated the importance of the genres she spoke about and the shifts in the genres due to technology. I will definitely add much more to the importance of the genre examples I choose because when I listened to Hannah's my attention was captures when she spoke of the greater significance and I think other audience members will react the same.

Open Post to Peer Reviewers

Well, here is my completed rough draft!!

PODCAST ROUGH DRAFT link

Key information about draft:

I didn't actually use any of the information I gained from the people I interviewed. I would like feed back on whether my draft has enough info without interviewees or if I should talk more about the people I interviewed.

Major issues or weaknesses in the “Rough Cut” that you’re already aware of (as well as anything you’d like to know from your editors about those weaknesses)

I definitely became better at recording the more I did it. This means I know my intro(the very first thing I made) is quite choppy and awkward compared to the rest. I also realize I stumble over my words sometimes. This is a simple matter of re-recording and editing.

Major virtues or strengths in the “Rough Cut” that you’re already aware of (as well as anything you’d like to know from your editors about those strengths)

I think I am fairly good at organizing the information in a clear and logical way. I would love feedback on whether the articles were described well enough for the listeners to be able to imagine them and whether the organization of my podcast is as clear as I think it is.

Production Report 8b

As the last production report was on the introduction, let's try out the conclusion. I feel producing the conclusion before producing the content on the different genres will help keep me focused on the purposes of the main body of the podcast.

Outline Item: CLOSING and LARGER SIGNIFICANCE

• Recap each of the genres and talk about how they fit into the american culture:
• Popular articles
• lectures
• Close with the purpose of these genres to educate by using rhetorical strategies

Adaptation of Outline Item: PODCAST CLOSING link

How did you decide to use form to present your content in the raw material you’ve shared here? How did the conventions of your chosen genre influence your choices?

I recapped what was said about the genres in the main body of the podcast along with adding how they fit into a person's life(in the context of the American Culture). I tried to add personal information about myself in order to support the points I was making but I don;t know if they were successful. I also ended with adding the ultimate purpose of both of these genres.

How did the production of this raw material go? What kinds of any hiccups, challenges, successes, creative epiphanies, etc. occurred during the process?

It was challenging coming up with the proper order of parts of the podcast. As I recorded the intro and conclusion I found myself going back to the outline and rearranging parts. But I feel that my rearranged outline(I didn't really change any of the information, just the order) has a better flow than previously. Now, I need to have he different parts of my podcast flow into each other as well as they do on paper.

Reflection on Production

Now that I've started recording content for my podcast, let's reflect on the production process.

What were some of the successes (or, things that went right) during this week’s process work? Explain, with evidence.

It took me a while to learn about the audio editing software I am using. However, after spending a good hour just experimenting, testing, and googling, I feel confident using the basic features of the software easily and efficiently.

What were some of the challenges (or, things that went wrong) during this week’s process work? Explain, with evidence.

Apparently, it is extremely hard for me to sound natural on a voice recording. I would record, and think as I was recording that I sound like I do naturally. Then I would listen to the recording to edit and find, to my horror, that I sounded stilted and had a bunch of awkward pauses. The difference between how I think I sound and how I actually sound was shocking, especially with the pauses.

How do you think next week will go, based on your experiences this week?

I am definitely going to have to make a lot of edits. I don't know if I managed to convey the correct/proper amount of details to invoke the proper imagery in the listener's mind. I am also going to have to work on the transitions between different audio clips.

How are you feeling about the project overall at this point?

I feel like my first attempt at creating a podcast has been fairly successful. After re-recording I was able to make myself sound less awkward and I was able to figure out how to use the software to eliminate long pauses. Now, I need to add some music, as per podcast conventions, and take feedback from the peer reviews to tighten up my work.

Production Report 8a

Now that an outline has been completed, it is time to start producing podcast content. Here is the first attempt at producing a piece from my outline, the introduction.

Outline Item: OPENING

• Introduce myself
• Introduce the field and speaking of: optical engineering
• Optical Engineers can do anything from building the telescopes astronomers use to learn about the universe to analyzing pieces of artwork.
• Talk about all the different genres people in the field of optical engineering partake in: 
• proposals, email writing, letter writing, conference, popular articles, peer-reviewed academic journals, textbooks/academic books, academic lectures/teaching
• Focus is on Popular Articles and Academic Lectures due to relevance of author(ME!)

Adaptation of Outline Item: PODCAST OPENING link

About the Podcast Opening:
How did you decide to use form to present your content in the raw material you’ve shared here? How did the conventions of your chosen genre influence your choices?

In all of the podcast examples I listened to, the recordings started out with the name of the segment(engl 109h assignment) and the name of the one recording(me). So, I started with an introduction of the assignment and then went on to

How did the production of this raw material go? What kinds of any hiccups, challenges, successes, creative epiphanies, etc. occurred during the process?

I don't really know how to add a grabber to the introduction. Conventions of the podcast intro seem to suggest a straight to the point introduction of the segment/series and the author after a short clip of music. Other than that, a rough draft of the intro was pretty painless to create.

Reflection on Pre-Production

How did my week working on this project go? Well read on to enjoy the riveting tale of my successes but (mostly) failures!

1) What were some of the successes (or, things that went right) during this week’s process work? Explain, with evidence.

I was successful in narrowing down the project. Previously I hadn't known where to start because there were so many different genre examples that I could possibly use for my rhetorical investigation.

However, I decided that I would focus on the genres that are most relevant to me, a student studying Optical engineering. I feel like  focusing on things that are relevant and interesting to me will allow me to go more deeply into the project.

I ended up choosing popular articles and  academic lectures because when one writes in these genres they often have to appeal to the audience’s different backgrounds using a bunch of the rhetorical strategies that we've talked about in class.

2) What were some of the challenges (or, things that went wrong) during this week’s process work? Explain, with evidence.

The main challenge I had was the only interviews were very very early in the process. I had conducted my interviews before I specified my focus on popular articles and academic lectures. Therefore, I didn’t focus the questions on those genres. This is slightly problematic but I do have enough information for my interviewees to integrate a little of their content into my work.

3) How do you think next week will go, based on your experiences this week?

I think next week will be fairly smooth sailing because I know what I'm going to talk about in my project now and have all the genre examples selected. The hardest part about next week is going to be learning how to use computer software to create a podcast with music and possible interview snippets.

4) How are you feeling about the project overall at this point?

I feel good about this project.  Going into this project, I was more confused than any of the other projects in this class because I thought it was such a strange topic (writing about writing but not the actual research content?). Now that I understand exactly what this project is trying to accomplish and I've made significant steps in achieving the goals by writing an outline and production schedule I'm feeling confident about my ability to produce a rough cut by the end of this week.

Production Schedule

With such a major project, pre-planning is helpful in ensuring I will meet the deadlines. Therefore, I created a production schedule for the creation of a rough cut of a podcast.

Here is the LINK to my production schedule!

Content Outline

Project two is all about the Rhetorical Investigation of how professionals write during their careers. Specifically, mine focuses on the writing in the field of Optical engineering. I plan to create a podcast to investigate different genres, focusing specifically on popular articles and academic lectures.

Here is the LINK to my content outline!