Podcast Project
Welcome here! This is a journey of my Podcast Project, which is a wonderful experience during the learning process for Writing 39A. The Podcast Project is about a group cooperation for creating an animated podcast and a microsite for the podcast about the course question, "How Disney films represents the norms of gender roles for the social construction?" The advantages for this Podcast Project are various. First, group members should communicate and coordinate with each other. We have different ideas about this project, so we need review every members' viewpoint to accept and rethink about the final topic. Second, we learn to annotated different sources, such as, Disney fairy tale films, Podcast and Essays. Third, we practice the speaking, reading and writing skills at the same time. Please enjoying the following page, you will be exploring more interesting about this Podcast Project.
SECTION 1: PRE-PRODUCTION: PREPARATION AND PLANNING
In the first section, I'm going to elaborate my pre-production with screenshoots and explaination for the Podcast Project with three moments that give me the most informative idea during 1-7 Weeks.
First Moment: Defining Key Words
Obviously, this is a first week writing assignment, which allow students to share viewpoints about social construction after watching a video about introduction to social construction. Social construction is one of the most important word in this course's topic. For this moment, it opened my eyes about the angle of the relationship between Disney films and social construction. This exploratory writing not only practice writing skill but also teach us to review classmates' work, learning to be evaluated. The work fits 39A Course Objectives by improving students' independent writing skill, communication skill between source and writing, and peer review.
Second Moment: Practicing Annotation
This is a week 3 Exploratory Writing. During this assignment, students should watch the Disney Fairy Tale Movie, Beauty and Beast, and then make annotations for four characters and write a summary about personal reflection. The process definitely give me inspiration and experience for annotating other films that cited in the Podcast Project. I was totally enjoyed this exploratory writing, because it fitted the Course Objectives by practicing communication skills by composing the film, understanding the importance of reflection, and improving writing skill.
Third Moment:
Creating Outline
No surprisingly, this is a week 6 assignment, which allow students to write a brief outline for Podcast and a discussion between every group members about the big umbrella theme. This assignment is helpful because it let me efficiently create a basic script for the long Podcast. The task largely pushed the overall process of the Podcast Project and let every group members participating. The work fitted 39A Course Objectives by improving my writing skill for readable, focused and full understanding, and developing my own writing habit.
SECTION 2: PRODUCTION: CREATING THE PODCAST AND MICROSITE
In this section, I'm going to describe my part of creation for the Podcast Project.
About Script
In this script, I mainly speak in part 1 and part 2 of the second segment. There are demonstration of the norms of gender roles in recent Disney Fairy Tale films that represented the social construction. I have a communication with our Co-host, Wenjiao Guo. Wenjiao asked me questions about recent female and male characters. And I cited Frozen for illustrate my two points. During this process, I improved my writing and speaking skills.
About My Job
Script Coordinator & Researcher
I actually played two roles, script coordinator and researcher. About script coordinator, I typically coordinated every group members' original outline into the final script. I followed everyone's suggestion about each section and separate all script into four parts, the introduction, section one and two, and a comparison. This meaningful job largely improve my writing skill and the ability for communicating and integrating different texts and sources. About researcher, I did my part research for useful resources and relevant pictures and screenshots from Disney Fairy Tale films. This job practice my reading and writing skill. More importantly, it improves my capability for focusing and taking useful information from other sources. Also, a improving on communicating between several sources happened during the research.
About My Extraordinary
The most excellent work for the Podcast Project I did is the design of the Microsite. I noticed that the microsite only needs two pages, but we have five at first. Because I know how to put them together in one page, I rearrange the webpage and choose a background picture for it. I really like the background picture. Four princesses wear modern clothes, which appeal to the topic of our Podcast, Kill Toxic Masculinity.
SECTION 3: LOOKING AHEAD IN THREE PARAGRAPHS
In this section, I'm going to describe my reflection to the Podcast Project.
There is one mistake I did during the Podcast Project, which is that I made my script with too many sources, so I got five minutes at first that occupy an unequal time range for the whole Podcast. However, I try to be concise and concentrate on more precise and useful information. At the second time of recording, I talk faster and energetic, so I regenerate an appropriate speaking duration. This mistake actually teach me to more concentrating with sources.
This Podcast Project is typically a collaborative task. From this experience, I learned to be acceptable and sacrifice. To be acceptable is the most important point, because different people hold on different viewpoints. Listening to the suggestions from others and providing advises need good communication skill. Moreover, sacrificing is the crucial key in collaboration. For instance, I originally have a lot of information wanted to share during the podcast. Nevertheless, I must consider other group members' speaking duration. We need to sacrifice and kindness for equality.
During the Podcast, I mainly focused on two headings, one about recent female character and another about male. For my essay, I'm going to further demonstrate the recent female characters in Disney Fairy Tale films and how they represent the norms of female roles in the real world. My viewpoint is that the characters' relationship depicted in Disney Fairy Tale films create a new representative norms of female roles. This point can concentrate on several Disney films, such as, Frozen and Maleficent. These two films both contain two female protagonists.