Prelude to the Podcast
During week one, I learned about Social Construction from a video by Gwen Sharp and Lisa Wade. Afterwards I defined social construction; "A social construct is generally a subjective idea of images and ideas linked with other images, ideas, people, and groups."
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I think this was an important exercise in improving my written literacy over multiple medias. Before this assignment I had never really annotated a video, which was important because I had to annotate a lot of videos afterwards.
Around week 3 was when I did my first peer review. I found this very helpful in two ways; I got to practice the skills I learned via catching mistakes of others, and I got to learn new ideas that I missed from others.
Week 6 and 7 were the weeks we worked on our podcasts, so naturally a lot of collaboration was required. At first, things were a little messy because none of knew what was going on and we all a little uncomfortable with each other. After a few meetings and a little of working together, I think we started to warm up to each other and make sense of the project.
The making of the podcast
My first major contribution comes in the form of my initial leadership. At the beginning of the project, our team was a little bit uncomfortable with each other. I think after I created a planning document and started putting down the initial ideas, the other members started becoming more active and warm.
My favorite section of the script I wrote is here. It may be a little rough around the edges, but I believe I was really speaking from the heart. The things I say in this section reflect I how I truly feel about the topic.
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Originally, I was going to write with a more evidence based tone. After self reviewing a few of my drafts, I decided to go with a more heart spoken tone because I thought it fit the podcast better.
My final major contribution on the project is the pictures I added to the website. I did not add all the pictures, but I did add the ones next to the audio. I chose these one because I thought they gave a good visual of the characters mentioned throughout the podcast.
Reflections
When I first met my group, we were all very quiet. Noticing this, I took it upon myself to really try to encourage the group to talk and submit ideas. I think a major mistake I made was taking control of too many ideas and not seeking out input from my teammates more. Definitely in the early stages of the project there was a lot of disarray and ambiguity because I didn't know everything we needed to do or plan for nor did I discuss the objectives with the team. After our first meeting, things started to change because the group started to warm up. I think once I let go of the reigns and had others contribute more, the project was able to come together.