For the next two weeks (three if you count Spring Break), you will be working in small groups to produce a 30 minute radio show to be broadcast on ds106 radio. Open, online students should feel free to share their names and emails/twitter here (see full list here) so you all can connect, what’s more feel free to work with for-credit students as well. Here are your guidelines:

• Work in groups of 3-4 and pick and tweet your group name (hashtag #ds106 and #ds106radio).
• Pick a genre for your show- news show, documentary, drama, variety show, etc.
• Identify a topic to be explored in your show.
• Your final show should total 20 minutes, and include an intro, outro, a musical soundtrack, and audio effects.
• Use these as inspiration for segments (although you are NOT limited to these).
• Your show can build off of audio assignments on ds106.us, but there should be a coherence to the show; it should NOT be a series of separately done pieces pasted together (there will be a niminal number of audio assignment stars for each class to get you going with Audacity).
• Your show needs 2 audio bumpers and two commercials.
• During the process, all members must blog updates about their progress, and be recording audio interviews with team members. This is material that will be used to do a 10 minute “making of” audio segment to accompany your final show.

Examples

Here are some good examples of some radio shows from Spring 2011 (right-click and download to listen):

• Mysteriously Mysterious Mysteries
• WSOZ Zombie Radio

Here are some good examples of bumpers and commercials:

• The Love Show Bumper
• ds106 will set you free (by Matt Martin)

Resources
See Alan Levine’s post here for some excellent resources, tips, and videos for the audio portion of ds106.

We recommend you downloading Audacity if you don’t have another sophisticated digital Audio Editor of you own. Also, I recommend you have a SoundCloud account for uploading and sharing work, and also an account on Freesound.org which will be a key resource for openly available soun d effects.

You will be evaluated on the following:

• how creatively you interpret and present your show theme,
• how effectively you tell the various stories you present, and
• how your show sounds. We don’t expect perfection, but we DO expect you to grapple with the technology to present the best product you can.
• In addition, at the end of the process you will be asked to blog about the entire experience. This will be an opportunity for you to share the challenges you faced and how you tried to surmount them.

The 30 minute radio shows will be due Sunday, March 11th at midnight.