Podcast/Microsite Project

This podcast is a summary of what I have contributed to our group podcast and connect this to our course objectives about developing habits for engaged reading, feeling more confident of my reading accuracy, understanding the importance of having a process when I am composing a sophisticated text, and habits of Mind. Our group podcast is about how Disney fairy tale movies depict gender roles and how they change through time. Through this project, I have learned many things including collaborations, independent thinking, learning from mistakes, as well as course objectives like developing habits for engaged reading.

Section 1: Pre-Production: Preparation and Planning

This is a screenshot from our first exploratory writing: On Social Construction. And this is my answer to the question: what is social construction and how Sharp and Wade define it. It helps me to develop habits for engaged reading because when I was watching the film by Sharp and Wade, I took notes and reflected what I had learned from this film after finishing watching it.

This is a screenshot from exploratory writing 2: Beauty and the Beast. And the sentences above shows how I annotate a specific scene that shows toxic masculinity and helps develop ideas about gender roles in the podcast. In this assignment, I develop the objective of feeling more confident of my reading accuracy. I learned to be very careful when I was reading or watching something and wrote down ideas that were important.

Above is a screenshot from one of my blog: Extra Credit: annotation of an additional film. In this blog, I watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and recorded what I was thinking at the time. When I was writing this blog, I developed two habits of mind and they were curiosity and responsibility. I did not just watching it and said Snow White was beautiful. Instead, I looked inside the movie and found things that I was curious about: why did this movie show Snow White's physical beauty and passivity? Then I wrote down many details as I can to show my responsibility of this blog.

Section 2: Production--Creating the Podcast and Microsite

This is my script which involves ideas about female beauty. In this specific moment, I argue that inside beauty is much more valuable than outside beauty. And this is our last sentence of the whole podcast. By creating this conclusion, I learned to be responsible for myself and others. Responsibility is a habit of mind in our course objectives and I think it is important for the big project like our group podcast.

This comes from my speaking part of the podcast. In the script, I make connection of my speaking part to the former group member by adding "I totally agree with your opinion." As I am the script coordinator, I learned to be open-minded by creating script for my speaking part and for other group members. Openness is one habit of mind that is important because I need to consider others' thinking and insert it into our final script.

This comes from my first draft of the script. At this point, I decide to divide our main argument into some smaller subtopics. The sentence above is the first subtopic which is about passivity shown in early Disney princesses. As I am the script coordinator, I learn one objective which is about applying these reading skills to various kinds of texts. To be more specific, I went to watch Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs because I had to learn more about Disney's early fairy tale movies. And by applying reading skills learned by class, I found many important scenes and lessens in that movie.

Our microsite: https://vyyezpodcast.wixsite.com/relicstorolemodels

Section 3: Looking Ahead in Three Paragraphs

1. learn from the mistake

During this podcast project, one mistake that I remember is that we do not find a way to meet with each other or ask some questions. The good thing is that we used Google docs and share it with each other. However, our podcast director does not make sure everyone is on deadline. As a script coordinator, I create zoom meetings, trying to connect everyone by giving advice on our class discussion post, and post important deadline and ideas on Google docs. However, I forget to find a way to connect our group members on our last required zoom meeting. As a result, we have a relatively hard time to communicate and most of the time we have to decide or do things separately. I think the next time I will make sure I create a question docs and tell everyone to check it at least once per day.

2. skills of collaboration

I learned that everyone should contribute something to a group project. In some cases, if there is a person who is lazy or not willing to contribute, some of the other members have to contribute more. I am a person who do not mind to contribute more than required. So sometimes my group members will be surprised as they find that I eventually finish their part of the project. And I sometimes feel surprised too as I see some of my group members are not content with what I contribute for them. And the most extreme case is that they delete all the part I have written for them and write by themselves. I am happy with that. I wish someone could do my part of the project. But I cannot bet or wait, until I find that others are lazy or forget to put their part by the deadline. I think in the future, I will communicate with my group members more in order to make sure everyone is responsible for their part.

3. ideas to put into the essay

During the discussion part of the podcast project, our group decided to look into the history of Disney fairy tales movies and how they represent gender roles of females. This is a very good topic in my opinion because it can be related to many things like social standards, public opinions, physical beauty, different characteristics, and more. And I am going to write a similar topic in my own essay, too. I am planning to write a topic like how gender roles of Disney princesses changed through time, and use some of the examples we have used in our podcast.