If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past month, you’ve probably heard about the American election. All the new outlets have covered it, and it’s all everyone has been talking about. In contrast, the Canadian election is a very hush hush topic. I had to watch the news to even know it was happening. In this blog post, I will explain my experience with both systems of government, and how the rest of the world could use a little more Canada.
In our latest project, titled “The World Needs More Canada,” everyone in the class chose a different topic that reflects how Canada should be a role model for other countries. We started the project by picking a current event topic to present to the class. I was born and raised in America, so when I saw the story about the attempted trump assasination, I knew it would make sense to present it. By the time I got to present my topic, I had created a document that explained the event in detail. If you want to check it out, you can click here.
The final product of the project was one episode of a class podcast, which proved difficult in a number of different ways. The topic that I chose was the difference between the multiparty system in Canada versus the two party system in America. I wanted to focus on this because I have personal experience with both, and the two elections are coming up soon. This meant I had to do a ton of research into the political state of both countries, and I learned a lot more about parts of both governments I never would have known otherwise.
The first step towards the podcast script was to write an essay explaining the topic, and how the rest of the world could use a bit more Canada. The script was a loose adaptation of the essay, but it had to be converted to a more conversational format. We had to write the essay with this in mind, which made it a bit difficult to bring my thoughts together in a way that makes sense. I have a lot of very strong political views, so I had to make sure that they didn’t leak too much into my writing. After many revisions and different versions of my essay, it was finally finished. If you would like to read it, CLICK HERE.
After the script was finished, we started adapting the essays into a podcast script. This was fairly easy, considering that we wrote the essays knowing that they had to become a script at some point. The scripts had minimal changes from the essay, and the main goal was to make them more interesting for someone who was listening to a podcast. If you want to read my podcast script, CLICK HERE.
After the script was done, we started experimenting with garage band. This was incredibly challenging for me, because I had never created any kind of music before. I had to learn how to use the software while trying to balance all of my other work. There were a lot of little difficulties with GarageBand for me, because I wasn’t sure how to export audio properly. Still, I managed to make a transition and outro clip that fit the tune of my podcast. As a class, we voted on which intro music we thought was the best. There was a lot of discourse over which one was the best, and whose should have won. We also voted on cover art for our podcasts, and even thought the one I liked didn’t win, I’m still pretty happy with the one we picked.
The process of recording the podcast was tedious, and time consuming. I had to record multiple different audio clips of each segment, and I spent hours recording and editing the whole thing. Every step of the way was challenging, but I’m glad I put in the effort to make something I could be proud of. If you would like to listen to my finished podcast, CLICK HERE (this link will be updated soon).
In conclusion, the if the US was just a litttle more like Canada, the country could succeed in having the faith of it’s citizens. I hope you enjoyed my podcast! Thank you for reading, and have a great day!