Although this is our final blog post. It almost feels like the hardest work is ahead. We now have to present our final project. Although we worked the whole time to finish and try to complete our goals. I am now reflecting on the last 12 weeks as a group. Although we did not complete our goal of 10 total podcasts. I can proudly say that not only did I learn time management, people skills, and interviewing skills. The most important skill I learned is that communication is the key to success when working with multiple people. The whole time we struggled with our different schedules. The way we worked it out was through communicating. But also throughout this journey I learned and met new teachers that had all come from different experiences. Each one sharing different advice for us in the future. I know now that I have multiple classes I will want to take in the future. Now all that is left to do is finish our final presentation and clean up some of our podcasts. I hope that all of our teachers and people who helped us along the way enjoyed the process and we greatly appreciate all the information they provided us. Regardless of our grade I feel that we 've done a great deal of work and learned a whole lot from not only the interviews but the interactions with different people and advice we got for Mr. Barker. This almost seems odd as this will be our final blog post. But I can gladly say that we are all proud of our progress and that we have learned many things throughout the process and I could not have picked a better group with a better idea for our Genius Hour project. This was a great experience and a project that I enjoyed doing very much.
0 Comments
Well, week eleven came and went by pretty fast. We got to interview Mr. Ferebee this week and we plan to record the episode for his interview in week twelve. We don't know if we should interview anyone in week twelve or not because it is our final week but six or seven podcasts out of our original ten planned is not bad at all, considering the obstacles that we had to face. We made end up recording Mr. Ferebee's episode during our Genius Hour time on Wednesday because Ty's mom will be subbing at the high school on that day and can bring us the equipment that we need to record and upload. Nonetheless though, six or seven out of ten planned episodes is not bad at all, taking into considering basketball season and also the fact that this project almost never goes according to plan. I'm proud of our group although I think this definitely could've gone a lot better if we had some better communication once basketball season started. I also think we did really good on our podcast, with this being the first podcast that any of us has ever done. I would still like to record a sports podcast or something with some of our buddies but I don't know if everyone would have the work ethic to keep that up constantly. Sports definitely grabs our attention a lot more than interviewing teachers and talking about their classes though. All we have to do now is really just to possibly interview one more teacher and record a episode about their class, record the episode for Mr. Ferebee, and to finish our final presentation. This has been a very interesting project for us and I think we have all learned a lot over these past few weeks. There's only one more week left until this is over and I think that will relieve a lot of stress off of us.
This week was definitely the only week so far that we did absolutely nothing. We only had to go to school two days this week because of Thanksgiving break so none of us really wanted to do anything since we had such a long break. Ty went out of town and was gone the whole week and Ethan and Cam both had their own Thanksgiving plans with their families so there wasn't really enough time to do anything over break even if we wanted to. This break was definitely a good mental rest for all of us before we get to Christmas break, which can't come soon enough. School has been stressful for all of us and having five days off is a really good thing for our head space. I will say though that it felt like the break went bye really fast which is kind of disappointing but Christmas break is like two weeks so that should be nice. Getting back into the school mindset after break is definitely the hardest part because no one has any motivation to do anything and it can become very frustrating. Next week we definitely plan to interview at least one person, maybe two, and record a podcast on that so we can get closer to what we planned to do for this whole project. It is also crazy to think that we are almost done with this project because it feels like we just started it and it has gone past very quickly. At the same time though, I think that we are all kind of glad that this project is coming to a close because it has definitely been stressful at times and getting it over with will become a huge reliever to all of us, not just the members in our group.
The past couple of weeks have been very unproductive for us to say the least. But this week we actually did something! We finally got our fifth episode uploaded about Mr. Poller and that was very refreshing. Mr. Poller actually got to be the very first teacher to come in and speak on our podcast which is a fun fact, if you want to call it that. He was really only able to do this because we were recording our podcast in a study room in the learning commons and we saw him walk by so we stopped in. He was very open to talk about his class and we think that he really added a lot to the episode. We don't know if a new episode will be uploaded this week because it is only a two day week with Thanksgiving break coming up. Ty will be out of town the whole week and Cam and Ethan have their own Thanksgiving plans. Next week though we should hopefully have a new episode come out. We really don't know how many episodes we will end up with but at this rate we are just going at our own pace. We are still kind of frustrated with the direction that this project has gone because none of us planned ahead for when basketball season started. It came out of nowhere and not one of us had a clue on how to react and to adjust schedules in order for us to continue recording our episodes on a regular basis. We all expected things to go our way all through these twelve weeks but we should have expected them not to and it has led to a nasty decrease in productivity. But let's talk more about the good stuff that has happened. We are lucky that Ty's mom was our substitute on Wednesday and she brought the stuff that we needed to record our podcast. If she wasn't our substitute then we probably still wouldn't have recorded our fifth episode.
This project has definitely been going downhill during the past couple of weeks. The real reason for this is honestly just schedules that don't cooperate with each other. Like we've said in the past, basketball season has started for Cam and Ethan and this is really been setting us back. They are both on different teams so their practice times don't match up with each other's which is making things even more difficult. Ty has been able to record anytime but we just need to all communicate with together better in order to record this next episode. It has been sort of disappointing to not record an episode for about two to three weeks now. We have been getting a lot of people telling us that they enjoy our podcast and are waiting for the next episode but we have not been able to deliver. We are kind of in a tough spot now because we have honestly no clue on how we can all make our schedules work together. We have thought about meeting together late after everyone's practices are done, but we really don't want to meet at 8:30 after a long day of school and basketball. Our other option was to bring all of our equipment to school and record in the media center and that one is definitely becoming a better option for all of us. We don't know if we will interview another teacher this week or not but hopefully we can interview someone during Smart Block and then record an episode during our Genius Hour time in class. This project has increasingly became more and more difficult for all of us but we all hope that we can find a solution that can get us closer to our final goal. We hope to record an episode this week and to also attempt to try and get back on track.
Once again, we were faced with more setbacks this week. We thought everything would go smoothly after week six and we felt as if we were back on schedule. Week seven was a whole different story though. Cam and Ethan both had basketball tryouts the whole week so we were not able to record the podcast and upload it. We also did not interview anyone this week because of this. We thought it would be best to not interview anyone so we did not add any additional work onto us and not get too ahead of ourselves. We don't know how this upcoming week will go with Cam and Ethan's new schedule with basketball and also only going to school three days this week. The next episode will definitely need to be recorded this upcoming week and we definitely need to interview someone as well. We used our Genius Hour time in class though to revise some older blog posts that needed more words added. This week was a relief to us as well though as we all felt like we needed a break for a little bit. With basketball now in the picture, these next few weeks will definitely become a lot more challenging as it will require a lot more planning from all members of our group. This project has definitely been a challenge to all of us as we all have had to plan well, manage our time well, and communicate with others and each other well. If we do not complete our goal of ten total episodes then we all would have learned these skills very well and hopefully been able to master them. This project has also given us the resources and knowledge to make another podcast as a group of friends in the future. Our friend group in general has talked about starting a podcast, possibly a sports one, in the future and we all think it would be a pretty fun thing to do and talk about. We all have pretty good sports knowledge and we think we could make a funny and entertaining sports podcast as a group. So if we aren't able to reach our goal we have definitely learned a few life skills and also have opened up a possibility of another podcast in the future.
This week we were finally able to get everything back on tack without any setbacks. Everything we did this week went according to plan and that was a real relief after some difficulties in the previous weeks. We were able to interview Mr. Poller this week and we plan to get that episode uploaded on Tuesday. We have also been doing better with our blog posts and getting them posted and with the proper word count. We need to go back to some of our previous blog posts and add words but that's about it. It was also a surprise to us to find out that some teachers and parents have been listening to our podcasts which we didn't really expect. Mr. Poller had mentioned to us that he had been listening to some of our episodes before our interview with him and that was a pleasant surprise to us. We hope that the next few weeks can be smooth sailing for us now that we have the hang of the things that need to happen in order for us to succeed. Our next episode should be interesting as well as none of us have had Mr. Poller as a teacher yet but we may try and get one of our friends to join us because he currently has Mr. Poller as a teacher. It is also crazy to think that we are already half way through the project. It feels like we just started and time really has flown by with this project. One thing that we really improved on this week was to email Mr. Poller the day before we interviewed him to remind him that we were planning on doing it and also just to be clear that it was okay with him. So far I think our project has gone really well and we have adjusted well to some problems that we have faced. I think it was a good project to do all though trying to record the episodes can be a pain in the butt sometimes. We haven't planned on who we are going to interview this upcoming week but we have communicated with some teachers to offer the possibility.
Week 5 of Genius Hour came with some challenges that we did not plan for but we figured out a solution around it. Our original plan was to interview Mr. Poller for our next episode as we had already set that up with him. We were supposed to interview him during Smart Block on Wednesday so we walked down to his classroom but his door was closed and none of the lights were on. Me, Cam, and Ethan looked at each other and said "You guys think Mr. Ferebee would let us interview him right now?" So we walked down to his classroom but he wasn't there either. Next we walked to Mr. Marrs' classroom but decided instead of interrupting him he would check back in with Mr. Barker first. We told Mr. Barker our situation and he said he would text Mr. Poller to see what was up. It turned out that he was pulled into a last minute STEM meeting that he could not leave. We decided we would try our luck going across the hall to Mrs. Snider's class who also happens to be Cam's mom. She said she would be happy to let us interview her during 3rd period so we could also get some of her student's perspectives on her class as well. The interview went great and the discussion with her students was very helpful. Since neither Cam, Ethan, nor I have her class it was good to get a perspective from a student's view which will help us in our next podcast episode that we will be recording this week.
In response to a comment from last week, the reason our teachers are not in our podcast is because the recording equipment is at Ty's house and we don't have the ability to move it since it is borrowed. Also our podcast is done on a student's perspective of classes for future student's to learn more about what to expect and experience with classes at Davie High. One thing we learned this week is that we need to do follow up emails with our teachers the day before we are planning to interview them to remind them of the interview. Another thing we learned is that sometimes we will run into problems such as scheduling or last minute changes, however, we need to adapt and figure out a solution so that each week we can use our time wisely and move forward with our production schedule. This week we were faced with some unexpected challenges. Our plan was to obviously interview someone and we decided to interview Mr. Robinson since Ty had recently discussed us interviewing him sometime during the week. He said that he would not be able to be interviewed until Thursday during Smart Block so we weren't exactly sure what to do on Wednesday during our Genius Hour time in class. We decided we needed to email some teachers again that did not respond to our first email because we needed more teachers to interview in the upcoming weeks. We also needed to email teachers again because Mr. Barker had made us aware that some teachers had talked to him and were unsure about our intentions with the podcast. We re-emailed several teachers and we got replies from just about every teacher that we did email. We made some plans for the upcoming weeks and that is what we did on Wednesday during our Genius Hour time. On Thursday we were faced with a different challenge. Both us and Mr. Robinson had both forgotten that we had the pep rally on Thursday so there would be no Smart Block during the day. Luckily, Ty had class with Mr. Robinson during fourth period and he some free time during the period, so he was able to interview Mr. Robinson for the upcoming podcast episode. Next week, we plan to interview Mr. Poller and to record the episode for Mr. Robinson's interview. We are already four weeks, almost five weeks, into this project and it does not feel like that at all. We may not be able to record as many episodes as we would like to because we did not realize just how much time this would actually take. That would be the one thing that every member in our group could agree on, we need to work on time management the most. Our interviews, Genius Hour times in class, and podcast recordings go very well but we just need to manage that time better between the three of us. We have definitely improved on communication with teachers throughout these four weeks. When we re-emailed some teachers, that really helped us to get back on track. We definitely hope to improve on our time management skills in the upcoming weeks and work towards completing our project in our timeline.
We have just now finished interviewing Mr. Barker for our first interview. We took a video of the interview and also took notes along with the interview. Now that we had finished our interview all we needed to do was record our first podcast. Our group went to Ty's house to help record our first podcast. We started by setting up where would record with our microphone, table and placement each of us recording. We first reviewed our video to help finalize what we would say for the podcast. We then spent 25 minutes recording our first podcast to post talking about Mr. Barkers classes and personal life. After this we figured out how to upload the post and make a cover for all of our podcasts. Later that week we went on to interview Ms. K. Cam could not be there for the interview due to sickness, but we still filmed and took notes on the interview to help make our second podcast for next week. We plan to record our second episode today and upload it as soon as possible. As we are looking ahead of the schedule, we may have to reduce the amount of episodes by one or two because of the number of weeks we have left. If we still really want to do all ten episodes that we planned on, we may have to interview and record two teachers a week in the future. Another thing we need to stay on top of is our blog posts. Our blog posts feel like another thing that we don't keep up with as well because of how much work interviewing and recording the podcasts can be. We will need to do better on this in the future if we want to stay on top of things. As for some good news, future teachers that we do plan to interview are Mr. Robinson who teaches math, Mrs. Snider who is a English teacher and also Cam's mom, and Mr. Ferebee who teaches science. Another thing that we have to do is do a follow up email to some teachers that did not respond to our first email. Mr. Barker made us aware that some teachers spoke to him and thought that we would just be criticizing their classes the whole time when that is not the point of our project at all. We need to mention to these teachers that the point of our project is to help students choose classes to take in the future and also for us to explore new classes that we may enjoy in the future.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2021
Categories |