November 18, 2021 Lesson Plan

Time for Interviews (45 minutes)

Let’s quickly talk about who is doing interviews and who is being interviewed.

Are your questions ready? Give them a look and consider the reading due for today that I’d like to briefly go over: Six Ways to Ask Better Questions in Interviews (thewritepractice.com)

 

Interviewing In-Person

When you go do your interviews, find a quiet space in this building. When you get there TEST the recording to see if it can be heard clearly or not. If it it comes through weakly, try to get recording device closer to both you and the interviewee.

Two main options for interviewing in person:

  1. Record interview on phone. If you have an iPhone, you can use the Voice Memo app. Open the app, hit the record button. Make sure you are recording (again, test this stuff before beginning). There are similar apps on other phones like Androids which I believe is called Sound Recorder. Once recorded, play it back to make sure you got it (though, again, if you test you should be good). You could then upload the interview from your phone by plugging it into your computer, emailing it to an email account, dropping it in a storage drive (e.g., Google Drive, Drop Box, OneDrive). Once you have it on your computer, you can import it into Audacity or share it with your audio editor for them to import it into Audacity.
  2. Record on your computer. You can record right in Audacity from your computer (or any device you have Audacity on). Make sure no headphones are plugged in and your microphone works on your computer. Just hit record. Again, make sure you test first.

 

Record on Zoom

You can also interview via Zoom. The one benefit is it makes transcription easier.

Steps:

  1. Schedule a meeting with the person you are interviewing. Make sure you are both clear on the date on time.
  2. Make sure you share the link to your personal meeting room on Zoom via your Baruch account.
  3. When time to interview, log into your Zoom account via Baruch.
  4. Start meeting from your personal meeting room. Go to “Personal Meeting” and click “Start.”
  5. When the meeting begins, click “Live Transcript” and then “Enable Auto-Transcription.”
  6. Check in with interviewee and make sure they are ready for being recorded. Remind them they do not need their video on since this will just be an audio recording.
  7. When ready, click “Record” and then “Record on Cloud.”
  8. When the interview is over, click “Stop Recording.”
  9. End meeting and when the meeting ends, the files will be created in your Zoom account.
  10. To download the audio file and the transcript, go to “Recordings” on your Zoom account. Click the three dots next to the recording of your interview. Then Click on “Download.”
  11. You’ll have an M4A audio file and a VTT text file.
  12. The VTT filed can be opened as a text file by using a text file reader like NotePad on a PC or TextEdit on a Mac (right click file and select “open with” and then select the text file reader). You can then copy/paste all text into a Word or Google Doc to use for transcription later.
  13. For the M4A file, you can share that with your audio editor or if you are the audio editor, save it to your computer. For importing to Audacity, you have to make sure you are able to do so by making sure your FFmpeg library is downloaded (on how to do that, go here: Installing FFmpeg Library in Audacity – Appuals.com). Once installed, you can import the M4A file into Audacity.

 

Large Group and Quick Small Group (30 minutes)

What needs to be addressed for a large group?

I saw a lot of talk about seriality–tells me that any episode can be heard out of place, but if case does nothing connect them together? Is there some kind of connection even if they can be heard out of order? What would that be?

I was thinking we could meet by roles:

-script writers to compare tones of scripts, coordinate sharing scripts

-audio editors to coordinate things like intro/outro music

Project Managers and Narrators: you should feel free to join either of the above groups or to meet among yourselves.

 

 

Regroup (10-15 minutes)

Let’s debrief from our meetings and plan way forward.

Title?: NYC Educated

What connects the episodes?:

  • just preview at end
  • same intro, different outro
  • scriptwriters stay in contact about what intros and outros look like from terms of what is said (e.g., how are narrators introducing themselves?)
  • Narrators also keep in touch

Conclusion in last episode for all the podcasts?

Cover art for podcast? (even if mock up without a finished product)

Scriptwriters: get me scripts soon

Due date?: December 7

What are decisions we made today? (within episodes and across podcast):

 

Activity on Re-Reading (5 minutes)

Do you just read something and never go back? What happens after you read? Do you return to it? What do you do? How do you do it? What is re-reading look like compared to reading for the first time?

 

Close out (2-5 minutes)

-Check in with Project Manager, Project Managers check in with group members. Make sure you are keeping to your schedule.

-Remember your deadline for your Research Project

-Final reflection project will be introduced during our next class on December 2 (will be due December 18). Other than that, one more Podcast Post/comment on November 23 and another Reading/Listening Post/comment on December 9.