Tag: influence

The ALT Manifesto

Sup guys and welcome to The Alt Manifesto.

 

Have you ever wanted to be King for a Day? Or maybe you just want to settle down for a hearty dinner full of Korn and Chop Suey! Or maybe you didn’t get any of those references and are wondering why I just said that. Well, no matter who you are I invite you to join me on this journey to understanding music-based alt subcultures like emo, goth, punk, metal, and so much more! 

So a somewhat random into to a school related blog post huh? In the last section of maker this year we were working on the famed PLP podcast project. The podcast could be on any school appropriate topic that we want, as long as it was trying to answer the driving question of;

How might I use design and content to influence others for good?

First of all how cool was it to practically be able to make our podcast about whatever we wanted? I chose to make mine regarding alternative music subcultures and their history and culture. Through this topic I believe I can influence others for good by educating people about these subcultures and how they affect people and our culture, instead of just calling anyone who wears all black “emo”.

The Prep

We started by envisioning a plan for our podcast via a collage, and coming up with podcast names and taglines. We then started to work on creating a script for a trailer for our podcasts, and looked at some other podcasts trailers on Spotify to see what type of stuff we needed to have in it. You can listen to my podcasts trailer here;

Along with our trailer we created a release schedule to help us plan out and organize how and when we would release our episodes. I originally thought I would release a single 20 min episode every week, boy was I off in thinking how achievable that would be.

Podcasting

We took a listen to several other podcasts on Spotify to analyze hoe they used story, tone, setting, and editing to enhance their show to make it enjoyable for listeners. Quickly building up the skills needed to plan, script, record, edit, and release podcast episodes.

Just the research for my first episode accidentally took hours because I was so interested in the topic (metal music) that I had a hard time deciding what I should include in the script. Eventually I did end up getting 2 episodes out and I think I may actually try to release more next school year just because I actually enjoyed making them. You can find my podcast here;

Conclusion

This project was super fun and I really enjoyed getting to show off my passion as a learner. The design process can be a bit tedious at times but I think I now have quite the hang of it. I love thinking about what my podcasts audience thinks about the show and if I am actually influencing others for good. Hopefully if you have a bit of extra time you could listen to one of my episodes and let me know in the comments what your thoughts are. Thank you so much for reading (or listening)!!!

As Always, Brooke

How does what we hear, read, and see influence us?

Summative reflection time!

Finally, the end! Hopefully you have read my earlier post on my reflection so far. If you haven’t read that, I would suggest you go read it before you finish this. My previous reflection was based on the technical aspect of the process of creating the individual advertisement drafts.

But wait, what about the DRIVING QUESTION?! Ah yes, the driving question. “How does what we hear, read, and see influence us?” Where to start, where to start? Advertisers use a variety of techniques to engage their target audience in buying something, doing something, going somewhere, supporting something or someone, etc. All ads we see are created to catch the attention of a specific group of people. Sometimes media uses something that you can relate to to influence you. You can also be subconsciously influenced if you don’t recognize the appeals that you are connecting to. In my opinion, I think that in this case, ignorance is not bliss and that it is better to be aware of how you are being influenced. That I guess is the answer to the driving question.

All of the project was basically ramping up to milestone 6, the final advertisement!

“Wow!” “Oh my goodness really?” “That’s so cool.” “Yayyyyyy!”

But seriously, north groups were scrambling to get the best collaborative advertisement finished and sent to the business ASAP. We had to take all of our feedback that we have received and refine it all down to one amazing advertisement that is ready to be seen by the public eye. Are you ready to see my north groups ad? Drumroll please! *Cue dramatic drumroll*

TA DAAAAAAA!

Lets now talk about the competencies that we used to help us complete the project. We used competencies from English, social studies, and maker. The english competencies we used were ‘Comprehending texts’ and ‘Designing texts’. The ‘Comprehending texts’ competency was very helpful to me because I learned a variety of different strategies to help me understand and analyze different types of texts. I think I greatly improved my text comprehension skills throughout this project. 

I really saw my growth in this project when we made the individual advertisement drafts. (Yet again please go read that post.) My first draft was pretty bad and I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing but by the time that we were finishing our final ads I actually was using knowledge that I gained over the project. I was learning new skills and I could visually see the progress I was making. Let me tell you, it is really cool to be able to look back on your work and see how much your skills have changed.

My favourite part of this whole project would probably be any work I did with my north group. We had such good times and shared many laughs XD. A big thanks to Gabi, Dylan, Sabrina, Erik, and Judah

I learned a lot about advertising in this project and how media is used to influence me. I know that I have gained knowledge that I will carry with me for a long time.

Thank you for reading my post and I hope you enjoyed!

As always, Brooke.