The Basis 

What is the legacy of World War Two in Canada? 

A loaded question, a question that can only be answered with knowledge of the war and knowledge from someone who has experienced the war in their lifetime. Luckily, I had access to both of these sources during this project. 

Before the process of creating our answer to this question, we discussed and studied the world of podcasts. Listening to one (or more) each day and reporting back, sharing our favorites and adding new channels to the class favorites.

The reason we did this was, as a class, we answered our driving question through a podcast series. Each student in the class creating their own podcast to add to this series. My podcast is based around an interview with Helmut Lemke, a man who was born in eastern Germany and experienced the war from almost every standpoint.

 

How did I do it?

Step #1: Research 

Before creating a podcast all about the second world war, we needed to learn all about the major dates and events. As well as trying to find a focus point for our individual interview, something about the war that is fascinating to us. Besides the class discussions, we found most of our prior knowledge from the series, WW2 in Colour.

Episode by episode, as a class we were introduced to main events of the war, such as Barbarossa, D-Day, and Canada’s role (of course). All of these battles and important dates are displayed with real footage from that time, fully colorized in a documentary style series.

 

Step #2: Connection to Veteran 

Once we had our main idea set for the podcast, it was time to get in contact with our veteran. Thankfully we had the help of The Memory Project, to connect us with them, and I, along with my whole class, had the honor of speaking to Helmut Lemke.

 Towards the middle of January, we had to get our interviews organized, by calling our assigned veteran and setting up a date for an interview. He came to visit our class and tell us his story. He is such a wise man and taught the entire class so much, more than we would’ve ever learned from videos or texts. His interview is linked below.

Full interview here.

 

Step #3: Creating My Podcast

Once it came to editing, I had a lot to work with, a whole hour of precious information to create a story of my own with. Because I was lucky enough to have recorded such an amazing and thorough story, my outline for the podcast was to guide Helmut’s story and our classes questions with voiceovers of my own, along with an introduction and conclusion. 

 

At the very beginning of the editing process, I was having some trouble with it, because of the fact that I hadn’t worked much with Garage Band much in the past. But, once I was shown the basics, I got the hang of it and got to work. 

 

Rose and Thorn

Here, there is a reflection on this project, one good thing one not so good, a pro and a con if you will. Starting off on the place for improvement (the thorn). Next time I create a podcast, I will make sure to have a stronger outline, covering how I want the podcast to sound and what information will be included. If I did this, I wouldn’t have to do this before editing and I’d have less work when that time comes. For the rose of this project, all I can say is that I’m more than happy with my final product. I feel as though I’ve told Helmut’s story and interpreted his words in the best way I could, covering the good the bad and everything in between throughout the podcast.