Last night I finished up my segment for the Ds106 radio show “Dog Days of Summer” that my class will be broadcasting on Monday.

The Childrens’ Season by mburtis

Overall, I’m really happy with how it turned out. I used audio that Leslie and Jim submitted of interviews with their children as well as a short interview I did with Madigan. In addition, I found a couple of interesting video clips on the Internet Archive. The first was a documentary about a progressive British summer camp for kids during World War II. The other was a documentary about a summer community program for teens in NYC during the 60s. I liked the sounds and stories behind these films, and decided to incorporate them into the overall segment.

I also tracked down some Creative Commons music that I used throughout the segment.

Here are links to the source material:

• Popsicle Summer by Viola
• A Child Went Forth (on the Internet Archive)
• Play Street (on the Internet Archive)
• The Return of Summer by Jeff Wahl
• L’été s’en va by Laurent

I have to say I loved working on this project. I need to push myself to do audio more, because I find it so satisfying. When I was working on the piece I could hear in my head what I wanted it to sound like. Sometimes I was able to actually execute my “vision.” Other times, as I worked with bits and pieces of the tracks, I heard new things that I decided to use instead.

There is definitely a kind of media fluency involved in working with audio like this that is a challenge to develop and foster. Simply wrapping my brain around the different tracks in my head and associating those ideas with the actual tracks in the software is a huge challenge for me. It’s like I’m having to develop a cognitive understanding of the media and the way it overlaps and intersects. It’s very different then constructing text narrative or meaning.