This is an analysis of my own process for creating the podcast and a reflection and my own thoughts of my progress toward course objectives. The podcast assignment is a group project that every group member need to contribute their own work to form an entire podcast. And our podcast’s purpose is to talk about Disney and its effect on socially constructed ideas over time. This podcast assignment was a brand new experience to me and it help me to achieve one of the goals in the course objectives, “Practice communication skills by reading, speaking, and composing in different types of media”.
Pre-Production: Preparation and Planning
In week 2, the assignment, “Watch and Annotate Lecture: Jean Kilbourne, Killing Us Softly” totally shock me out because I never think about that at recent days, gender inequality is a very serious problem in the society. In this assignment, I mentioned that “It would never happen and nor should it and believe me, this is not the kind of equality I am fighting for. I don’t want them to do this to men anymore than to women. But I think we can learn something from these two ads: one of which did happen and one of which never would.” From these sentences, I realized that we need to pay more attention to the gender roles for both males and females. Through this assignment, one of the course objectives, “Practice communication skills by reading, speaking, and composing in different types of media”, was well-developed. Because this assignment needed me to watch the lecture first, and then made some annotations about the lecture, my ability of communication skills by different types of media definitely improved a lot.(Below is a screenshot of the annotation of the Lecture: Jean Kilbourne.
Production—Creating the Podcast and Microsite
In my own script, I mentioned that Compared with these two films, the recent films are more and more inclined to show a powerful woman in the movie in order to teach us the good and strong gender roles for females. It will effective answer our questions of our podcast, “Disney and Its Effect on Socially Constructed Ideas over time”. In the course objectives, “Understand the importance of peer review to your own reading and writing” is related to my own work about the script because I finished my podcast assignment with my group members and I realized that it is very useful, effective, and important of peer review to my own reading and writing.
I am the host of our podcast. Before every segment of our podcast started, my job was to ask several questions and start to help my group members to state their own point of views on the topic. It was also related to the course objectives, “Understand the importance of peer review to your own reading and writing” because I gained and gave the feedback of peers with my group members and developed our podcast with them.
Before the final podcast, I did a lot of researches about our main topic. I watched Iron Man 1 and Iron Man 3 and I collected the details of the lecture given by Jean Kilbourne to help me develop and state my own ideas about gender roles in our podcast. “Practice communication skills by reading, speaking, and composing in different types of media” is one of the course objectives that I developed during this process because I need compose all these different types of media to be the useful and effective sources in my own part of the podcast.
Looking Ahead in Three Paragraphs
One thing that I learned from the mistakes is that our final script is too long for our group member to speak in the podcast. In another words, it does not mean that the longer our final script is, the better our podcast is. In fact, we need use some brief but effective and useful sentences to describe our point of views and make our podcast appropriate with the time limited. I learned that discussion with group members is quite useful and helpful because we could find the problems or the mistakes as soon as possible when we are talk to and discussing with our group members.
When we collaborate with others, listening to others’ ideas carefully and stating our own ideas in time are the two important things that I learned from the process of creating my own script for the podcast. When others are stating their ideas, I will listen to them very carefully and patiently because their ideas about the project are also very significant and helpful for me to form my own opinion. Stating my own idea in time with peers is crucial, because they will never know what you think about this project unless you argue your own idea. What is more, never be afraid of talking to the peers, even if you do not think you are right on some points.
I will put the idea that the early Disney films represent the old stereotype of women and the recent Disney films changed the value of gender roles and broke this kind of stereotype of women. I will use Disney superheroes films(Iron Man 1 and Iron Man 3)in my essay to show a transformation of the leading male, Tony Stark and the leading female, Pepper. In the podcast, I only discussed about the leading female, Pepper and I think it will not be enough for my own final essay. I will cover both the leading male, Tony Stark and the leading female, Pepper in my essay and analyze and summarize their characteristics and what do these characteristics connect with the Disney films and social construction.