Category: Revision

My process for the podcast started with figuring out Audacity and Sound Cloud. I had to use the resources posted on our class website to figure out how to edit the recordings to make them sound better, to cut pieces out, to add music, and to mess with the volume settings. I used that knowledge that I gained from reading the resources and applied it to my podcast editing. For the script I really looked at the rubric and came up with important questions that were in the rubric and that I answered in my essay. I used those questions and turned it into an interview type podcast. I had my mom interview me about my learning experiences and just condensed my answers into shorter more concise paragraphs that were originally from my essay. I liked the result because I had never done any sort of audio editing online before so that was a learning curve for me but I like that I have that under my belt now and I understand how to do it.

It took me about three and a half hours to do everything involved with the podcast. It took me about an hour to learn how to use the software and get it downloaded and to make a Sound Cloud account. It took me about an hour to listen to other podcasts and figure out what elements I wanted to have in my podcast to make it more interesting. Then it took me about a half hour to script my essay with the questions and the answers from my essay. Lastly, it took me about an hour to record my essay and get it all edited.

When constructing my essay, I first met with Vic because I knew that I usually struggle with creating outlines. She helped me figure out what my thesis statement was and helped me figure out what things I really wanted to explain in my body paragraphs. I used the two prewriting activities, cluster and timeline, which helped me brainstorm specific learning experiences that I have had and helped me pick which ones were the most important and the best examples to put into my essay. This was much different than my usual steps because I never do any pre writing activities and I struggle with deciding what to put into my outline. The pre writing activities really helped me figure out what I was going to specifically be writing about. The writing strategy that was called the web I did not do because I knew that I wasn’t specifically going to be talking about one person that helped me in my learning experiences because I was going to be talking about multiple people. I am really satisfied with my final draft because I spent a lot of time editing my draft and made it the best that I could make it.

When we actively read the texts from Bain and Dweck we were trying to understand what the different learning styles were and what they meant. With our reflective learning essays, I feel as though we analyzed the information from Bain and Dweck about different learning styles and mindsets before we even knew that we would have to write a paper on it. Then everyone evaluated which aspects of the learning styles and mindsets we have experienced in our pasts. After figuring that out, we all created a paper explaining our experiences and comparing it to the pieces of writing. The podcast was also a creating piece because we used the essay that was already created to make something completely new.

For my revisions the big part of it was adding a stronger introduction and a stronger conclusion. I did not really have an introduction on my first draft, and although I did have a conclusion, it was not very good. So I added what was my conclusion to the paragraph before it and wrote a better paragraph that concluded the essay better. For the introduction I laid out my opinion on the two different ways of learning and I also introduced the two articles that would be the “They Say” portion of my essay.

I had many surface errors where I switched words out and got rid of spelling errors. I changed “and”s to “a”s and got rid of a lot of “the”s that didn’t fit into sentences. I also tried to shorten some sentences or get rid of some that were repetitive because when I added the introduction and conclusion it made my word count go up and I was close to having too many words.