Blog

Digital Media in Education -CloudCast

Here is a link to my podcast if you have not heard it yet: https://soundcloud.com/user-831404300/cloudcast-digital-media-in-education

Creation of my podcast
My podcast is a discussion on the benefits and limitations of the use of digital media for student learning and engagement.
Approaching this topic I knew that it would be more engaging if I drew on my own experiences and knowledge about the topic as it is relevant to me whilst I am studying online. In doing this I related ideas and statements back to examples I had experienced so far throughout my study. I also used a name for my podcast series “CloudCast” to allow listeners to more easily differentiate my podcasts from others.
Another strategy I employed in the creation of the podcast was tone of voice. I varied my tone as much as I could (as I was sick at the time of recording) to pose rhetorical questions or factual statements throughout my piece. This making it easier for listeners to engage with and understand.
I used the program audacity to edit my audio recording as I think it is quite easy to use and I am familiar with it. This is because I also use it to edit gaming commentaries for some of my YouTube videos. Using audacity I edited out any mistakes I made whilst speaking as well as added in intro, prelude and outro music (including fade ins and fade outs). Finally whilst editing I also used the normalize feature to increase the volume of my voice recording so it was consistent throughout the podcast.
The last strategy I used in the creation of this audio was quality equipment. I used a microphone that reduces the ‘pop’ sound of p’s in my speech. It also eliminates most background noise and records my voice clearly. This leading to a higher quality audio recording, overall a higher quality podcast.

My podcast was informed by an academic journal ‘Digital Culture & Education’ I found this journal while researching my topic. Whilst reading I noticed a line in their conclusion that summed up and evidenced the point I was attempting to make in my podcast. So I directly quoted this line and used it as evidence for my previous ideas in the podcast.

I did not create anything other than the recording of my own voice for this podcast, however I did use creative commons music throughout the podcast as an intro, outro and to split up the benefits and limitations I discussed in the middle. I found this creative commons piece named Electronic Intro Music-Creative Commons which will be referenced below and in my sound cloud description.

Throughout the task there were a few challenges I overcame the largest one being, my voice sounding off as I was sick. To overcome this I recorded short parts at a time making sure my voice sounded energetic and enthusiastic to portray how I feel about the topics discussed. I also drank water in between recordings to help with this.
Another challenge I faced was finding appropriate creative commons music to use for the podcast. I was able to overcome this through using sound cloud and searching for ‘electro creative commons intro’ this brought me to the song I chose. Which was energetic uplifting and reflected the mood I wanted to portray.

References
Davis, K., Ambrose, A. and Orand, M. (2017). IDENTITY AND AGENCY IN SCHOOL AND AFTERSCHOOL SETTINGS: INVESTIGATING DIGITAL MEDIA’S SUPPORTING ROLE. [ebook] Washington: University of Washington, p.44. Available at: http://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/davis.pdf [Accessed 26 May 2019].

Electronic Intro Music-Creative Commons by Anoop H (CC BY 3.0)

Are online relationships real?

Selfie taken by me 2019.

To start off, a bit of context about me. I am a nineteen year old male who is very passionate about gaming and content creation. I have a very weird sleep schedule which consists of me going to sleep in the morning and waking up in the afternoon before I have to go to work at my part time job. This results in my online presence and personality being very important to me, as the majority of my friends and also my girlfriend I originally met online and still communicate with online.

To me the formation of online friendships and relationships is no longer a new concept. Previously I would have thought it was kind of weird to have friends that I have never met in person. Although that idea probably stemmed from another common idea shared by the majority of people that questions how well you can truly get to know someone online. Now having met multiple people online and created a lot of very strong friendships I have realised that I can get to know people online almost as well as I can in person. This was proven to me when my online gaming group “Liberty eSports” had a meet up in Sydney. Where we all met for the first time in person, we got along so well and we all felt like we had been friends for a long time. Even though this really was the first time we would meet in person.

Trust by Vic (CC BY 2.0)

Snap-chat as a social media has been a great enabler in allowing friendships like this to take place and be maintained. As we are now able to see pretty much live photos of our friends that we are talking to, allowing us to put faces to the online personas we are getting to know. This creates the sense of trust which is needed in a friendship. “Can we trust the people with whom we form relationships through electronic communities?”(Agnihotri, 2015). This question posed by Agnihotri is very dual sided, as older people of the community still believe that everyone online is a “predator”, where as younger people or people who are more connected with the online world such as myself are realising that online relationships can be amazing and open many doors for people. Personally I would suggest exercising caution when meeting people online, but there are definitely a lot more genuine people wanting to meet others online in recent years, with the advances in social media. Without social media, I would personally have not met the majority of my current friends. This tweet sums up my thoughts on online friendships pretty well.

Imagine a world where we could be close friends with people all over the world without even having to ever meet them in person!! Oh wait……social media makes this possible!!! #Socialmediaage #ALM101— Dechlan McLeod (@dkmcleod99) April 13, 2019

Now let me pose another question, how can someone have/maintain a romantic relationship online? Is it even possible? Well my girlfriend and I met online in a game called Deceit. Firstly we began talking about where we are from and about what games we like etc. As you can probably imagine it progressed from there as we had many common interests and values. Now the interesting thing is that I am from Australia and she is from Austria. With a time difference of 8-10 hours depending on the time of the year its hard to make it work to say the least. As we have access to multiple social medias that we both use, communication isn’t hard. In time we grew closer, wanting to meet in person more and more to know that what we had was real and not just an online fantasy.

Sometimes I can’t believe I am in a relationship with someone who lives over 14,000km away!! Talk about long distance. Thank God for #socialmedia— Dechlan McLeod (@dkmcleod99) April 13, 2019

Taken by me 2019.

In January 2019 my family went on a holiday to Europe with one of the destinations being Austria. This was our chance to finally meet each other in person and confirm all of what we believed to be true about the other person. As the time grew closer to when we would meet, our nerves also grew. Anything could have happen, I could have be meeting with a total lunatic. Although these thoughts were eased, as we had seen videos and pictures of each other a lot on snap-chat. Finally though, I saw her, we walked to each other and hugged, in that moment all of the nerves vanished. As we began speaking we both realised that everything was real and just as it was online.

To conclude I believe that online relationships/friendships are not only possible but can be very beneficial to all people. This is because you can be close with all different people worldwide who will influence in a vast amount of ways. Bringing all different cultures, views and values into your life and your worldview!

References
Agnihotri, N. (2015). Investigating relationship between trust and online communication. Indian Journal of Health & Wellbeing, 6(11), pp.1062-1069.

Social Media a gift or curse?

In the age of social media that we are living in, we are bombarded by so many opinions and views of social media. Many popular YouTube personalities love social media as it allows them to connect with their audience easily. However some creators (Such as Prince Ea) also think that social media is causing a disconnect between people and the “real world”.

I believe social media is absolutely a gift to us as it allows people to meet and for people to share their thoughts and views with a much broader group of people than would be possible otherwise. Personally I use social media to advertise my videos for YouTube, I also use it to discuss problems in games that I play, further allowing me to keep up to date with the creators of those games.

On the other hand social media does have a lot of negative impacts currently as well. For example social media has also been linked to a lot of suicides and other severer online bullying cases. Another negative point that can be made is that we are so focused on our phones and our online personalities that we forget that we are interacting with real people, that also have real feelings. This potentially resulting in circumstances that we wouldn’t really consider as mentioned above.

These are a few of my thoughts and views on this topic. Feel free to comment down below any questions you have and/or some of your views on the topic too!