Broadcast Yourself

Intent and Purpose of the Broadcast

The purpose of this week's assignment is to perform a live broadcast.  I chose to make a broadcast about creating parody songs as motivational tools for students taking the PSSAs.  This is an activity that I have been doing for the past 3 years at the middle school and the students really enjoy it.  In all honesty, standardized testing is not too exciting for the students that have to partake, so the idea is to motivate them by allowing them to take part in the process of parodying a song.  Originally, the middle school had an “advisory” period on every Wednesday and would do different activities.  When I arrived, I helped my mentor, Marisa, with helping to create and record parody songs for her advisory.  I have a strong background in music and brought a lot to the table in terms of recording (especially with having a MacBook and GarageBand).  Other teachers would have their students simply record the new lyrics over the old songs.  But, I would find an instrumental track and have the students sing over it and then, of course, spend countless hours mixing in order to create a polished final product.  I then became “in demand” when PSSA parody time came around.  Last year, however, it was decided to not do the PSSA parody so I took it upon myself to create one.  This time I created a movie via iMovie to accompany the song.  The kids really, really enjoyed it and, from there, I realized that it was something that I should push myself to do annually.  The first song we parodied was "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz.  The second song parodied was "O.M.G." by Will.I.Am and Usher.  And, the third song (with video) is "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen.

With the changes that our district went through over the past summer, I am now teaching a class at the high school called Video Productions.  One thing that I wanted the students to do was create a PSSA parody song and video for the elementary and middle school students.  This is a project we are currently working on.  I have two groups of three students working in a “competition.”  One group is parodying “What does the Fox Say” by Ylvis and the other group is parodying “Walk this Way” by Aerosmith/Run DMC.

Testing

I chose to go with Livestream because I've seen it in use before.  Sign up was simple.  I downloaded the "Livestream for Producers" application and played around with it on Tuesday night.  On Saturday, I tried out the live stream for practice 3 separate times and rehearsed what it was that I wanted to broadcast.  The feature that I thought was the best was the ability to cast camera or screen or both.  I also played around with the mixer feature because when I would play the QuickTime files, they would present feedback so I adjusted to only record the internal audio as opposed to the microphone.

Advertisement

To advertise, I sent out a tweet on Saturday in the afternoon.  I then emailed my colleagues at my district and posted to FaceBook.  I posted to Twitter several times on Sunday and once again on FaceBook.

The Broadcast

I started to broadcast at approximately 7:55 pm on Sunday night.  I started early to get prepared.  At 8 pm I began the true broadcast.  I started by identifying myself and my purpose.  I worked with Livestream's "Livestream for Producers" application and was able to show myself on camera and show my screen (which was very important for demonstration purposes).  I quickly explained the purpose of the broadcast and showed a couple of example PSSA parody songs.  Then, DISASTER!!! Not really, but I hit stop on the Livestream application instead of stop on iMovie.  It was an easy problem to fix, so no big deal.  Although, I did forget to turn the mic on when I came back in (about 1 minute, whoops), but I fixed that and repeated what was missed.  Anyhow, I moved into the demonstration portion in which I explained how to acquire an instrumental track mp3 and how to open GarageBand and import the mp3.  Then, I demonstrated how to adjust key and tempo as well as how to adjust different audio effects.  The next step was to record vocals, which I also demonstrated (poorly, yeah I know) and explained.  Finally, I showed how to create a final mixdown and check audio levels as well as how to export.  I wrapped up by explaining how to use the parody song with iMovie and allowed for time for anyone to ask questions.

The Good:

I thought I performed fairly well.  I mumble and stutter all the time, so that wasn't nerves or anything.  I was happy with the topic I chose and thought I explained it fairly well.  I spoke fairly clearly and reminded myself to slow down when talking.  I thought I did a good job with utilizing both screen and video capture and simultaneous screen/video capture.  I rehearsed my spiel several times before and thought it flowed well.  I think that when any adverse things happened, I recovered well.

The Bad:

I could have improved the lighting and did a little bit more practice with working with the audio (my voice booms sometimes).  Overall, the broadcast, with better practice and timing, could have been about 5 minutes shorter.  I could have explained some of the more technical things with GarageBand, or maybe just given a more straightforward example instead of bumbling from advanced to beginner speech.  In my mind, I kept telling myself to remember the audience that I was broadcasting to.

The Ugly:

Attendance... I did advertise several times on Twitter and FaceBook and emailed all of my colleagues at my district.  I got two friends from FaceBook, one colleague from work, and my wife (who you can hear in the background every once in a while).  So, despite my efforts, I did not have much of an audience.  I was pretty disappointed by this because I did reach out to a lot of people.  I presume there may have been several factors including the fact that I chose to broadcast on a Sunday night.  I thought it was a good time, but I don't have kids or cable, so that may have been an oversight on my part.  Anyhow, I did publish the broadcast to FaceBook, Twitter, and my weekly Tech Blog for my district.  Hopefully I will get some more views.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would say that I actually really enjoyed doing this.  Even though I was disappointed by the turnout, I had fun explaining something that I know and enjoy very much.  I definitely see the value of broadcasting in education.  However, I would assume that it would be difficult to get students to attend a live broadcast outside of school.  I would also assume that some students would really enjoy it.  It would not work with my 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th graders, but I could see getting a good draw from my two elective classes (9th-12th and 10th-12th graders).  I can see myself using this in the future, but sparingly, unless I can really develop it into a very purposeful activity.  I do like the archival capabilities of Livestream, but as a free subscriber, broadcasts are only available for 30 days.  Overall, it was an enjoyable experience and I hope to develop a way to incorporate broadcasting into my professional life.

Here is the archived broadcast - http://new.livestream.com/accounts/6313323/events/2586978

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.