THE RETURN: OF ITA!!

Here we are, all back from spring break!! Though perhaps not all the students were quite as enthusiastic about this fact, Paul and Elizabeth started the day anticipating smooth sailing. Before spring break, the BTWs were purported to be nearly done - all we needed to do was finish things up, and send 'em off!

To liven things up a bit, and as per AJ's suggestion, Paul and Elizabeth had an example of professional level radio drama to start the class off. This American Life, a production of Public Radio, is one of AJ's favorite shows and provided a good intro to the class. The students listened to the 400th episode, in which the producers decided to undertake the most difficult task imaginable: taking stories their parents had pitched to them and make them into entertaining radio. Now of course, their parents were thinking of stories along the lines of the Erie Canal or the personality of Enron. The challenging story the class listened to was on "Funny Funerals". Many students seemed to enjoy it a lot - Diana was giggling through some of it and there were a couple times when students burst out into all out laughter (sometimes all by themselves as not everyone has quite the same sense of humor).

After listening to stories of ministers exiting funerals into a closet door and humorous masses in other Ukrainian, AJ and Elizabeth led a discussion to get a feel for what the students thought. AJ pointed out the fact that, though this story was only about 10 minutes long, this producer probably had 3 hours or so of other audio she had to sort through to create this story. When asked how the producer had made this difficult topic interesting and funny, Jose and Diana mentioned the different music and voices she used - Elizabeth added how much she had appreciated a scene where the producer particularly recorded the elevator music and commerical recording while she was on hold at a funeral :) Overall, the students learned a little bit more about story-crafting, and how to technically construct things well to make them interesting.

This discussion took up a good chunk of education time, so Paul did a quick review on more advanced concepts like clipping, different kinds of cords and mics, buses, normalization . . . the students took it all in (hopefully) and then went on break!

The due date for the BTWs was the end of class, yet it soon became apparent that this was a bit of a shock. Taylor was in a group with Keke and had been absent the past few weeks, so she didn't know much of what was happening and Keke was absent today. So she and Elizabeth worked on the script Keke and Taylor had agreed upon at the beginning of working on the project.

Tenzin, Diana, Michelle, and Jose's group unfortunately had difficulties saving and ALL their dialogue was lost - having to start from scratch, the whole group ended up in the recording studio, working well together.

Jaylah and Malibu's group also had difficulties and lost some of their project. They ended up in the copy machine room rewriting and rerecording. (as the conference room was locked)

Alli, Ninah, and Taylor, however, saved correctly! They all worked very well together the entire BTW time, various screams and bird call sound effects erupting every once in a while from their side of the room :)

Around 2:10, after all the craziness of discovering the missing projects and scrambling to get everyone set, Paul called the class together for the second permit test attempt. After this was over, Paul directed the students towards blogging, as Elizabeth spoke with Jaylah and Malibu about getting their .wav files off of the H2 recorder and saving them.

Though Paul and Elizabeth's dreams of completed, shiny, new BTWs were not realized, the day ended on a hopeful note - Paul announced that the class would have a whole other day to work on their BTWs!! Good planning Paul. Hopefully this extra time will allow everyone to complete projects they enjoy and are proud of.

Until next (two) week!