Throughout the past few weeks, we have been learning about the importance of listening. Through this, we discovered a website called Story Corps. Story Corps is all about telling people’s stories, and that everybody has a story to tell. We did lots of mini assignments while navigating our way through this website like finding the hidden meanings behind stories and discovering patterns throughout them. As you may have already guessed we had to do a mini project along with this. The project was made up of three podcasts, one from a school partner, another from a relative and finally one from a stranger. Throughout this podcast, we were also paired up with a partner from an older grade. This partner would also tell their story for the first podcast.

The first step to finding a good story was the questions. The questions could range anywhere from life lessons to career choices. During classes, we practiced asking questions and answering them. The hard part was mostly the follow-up questions, they were the ones that came after the storytelling. We had to ask questions like “how did you feel” and “what was that like”, this would add an open-ended conversation that could lead anywhere. This was the direction we wanted to go, we needed more open-ended conversations to spark a story in somebody. These conversations could also be sparked by “what” questions, and long pauses after comments. We learned a lot of this through a video that also talked about dealing with difficult situations in interviews like if there is a sad moment. For example when somebody talks about a difficult time in their life you are supposed to look neutral and not concerned or sad. You can obviously say things like “I’m sorry” but you can’t act like it’s a crazy situation otherwise the speaker won’t want to talk any more about their story. Once we practiced a few scenarios and wrote up a list of around 20 questions we were ready to interview people!

So for our first podcast, we had to interview our partner. When the interview started we began talking about her ACL surgery and experience. Throughout the podcast, we jumped from the process of the surgery to recovery and how she handled not doing sports. In the end, she wrapped everything up with talking about the lessons she learned through this experience.

Once the podcast was finished we started to edit our audio. We wanted the podcasts to resemble the story corps one, so we started to look for patterns. We found that all the podcasts began with a small musical interlude and introduction of speakers, then the music faded away when the story began, and at the end was a small thank you to the speakers and a little more music. We also had to decide whether we wanted to edit out our voice questioning the interviewee or wanted to keep them in. In the end, I edited out my voice in Ferrite and created the music in Garage Band.

For this next podcast we had to interview our relatives, the relatives could be close or just family friends. I decided to interview my dad. We talked about him moving around, getting his job, and marrying my mom. For this interview, I also wanted to do the same as my first podcast and leave my voice out for most of it. I felt like going this direction because then it would sound more like they were telling their own story without me. I thought that in the end, it sounded pretty good, take a listen!

For our final podcast, it was a little different, we had to interview strangers! We did this at an exhibition night for the younger grades who were showing their projects. The idea was to interview the parents, relatives and, friends that showed up. The second part of this interview was creating an inviting environment. The interviewing room had to have some type of food, good lighting and semi-soundproofed. For our room we decided to make it look homier, we added rugs, chair, lights, plants and a fireplace. For the food, we had some sugar cookies and an assortment of tea. Finally, we needed some type of system to divide the room time. Since we were in groups of 6 and didn’t know who we were interviewing or how long it would take we had to come up with a system. We ended up pinning a time schedule board where everybody would write down when they were going and with whom. In the end, I thought everything turned out pretty nice, here’s a little time-lapse of us setting it up!

My interviews turned out pretty well, I was a little worried though because I only managed to get two interviews. The interviews did turn into something in the end though and I got some good stories. Like all the podcasts I used Ferrite to edit and Garage Band to make the music. Here’s my first draft!

So since this was the last podcast we were going to do we wanted to make it perfect. Our partners were told to listen to the podcast and give any critique they felt was necessary. Here’s some critique I got!With that, I created an even better version. Although this draft turned out pretty well in, the end, I had a few bumps in the road. Once I finished editing my podcast I was cleaning up my recordings and deleting the ones I didn’t need. I stupidly deleted my ORIGINAL INTERVIEW, I was calm at first until I realized that it had deleted all my other clips in draft one and two along with the interview! I had a mini panic attack, but once I calmed down I emailed the apps helpline. They didn’t end up responding, so I decided to improvise. I grabbed my first draft from Showbie (an app where we hand everything in). But of course, this didn’t have nearly enough audio I needed, because since most of my critique was based on hearing more of my voice during the interview which I edited out from draft 1. I decided I was just going to have to re-record most of my talking clips (the ones where I ask questions). But of course, I had to make sure the volume and tone were the same as the interview as well otherwise it would have sounded obvious that I re-recorded them. To do this I played with the volume in ferrite as well as the pan volume (pan adjusts the tone). In the end, it did sound a little off but considering what I had to do to make it sound like that I was pretty proud! Here’s how it turned out!

For my final revision, all I had to do was turn up the volume on just the interviewee’s voice so everything was clearer. I think this podcast can always be better but for now, I’m happy with the outcome!

Overall I learned a lot about not only creating and finding stories but how to listen and engage with other peoples stories. I also improved many everyday skills in various apps. This project was very interesting because along with a podcast we also got to listen to other peoples stories and get to know them better. Overall I would love to do something like this again!