Editing the First Episode
Issues have been resolved! It turns out a combination of needing to clear out space on my computer because the hard drive was full (it would not download the audio and I could not figure out why, gotta love troubleshooting and independent problem solving!) and needing to change the audio file from a .WAV file to a .mp3 file were all I needed to do. I used Sound Trap to do this, just putting the .WAV in and exporting it as a .mp3 and putting that into Adobe Podcasts. It transcribed easily and now I can use that to edit. Huzzah! Now to tolerate listening to myself talk. I am thankful I could edit out all the um’s, uhh’s, like’s, and dead air space without having to listen because that would have been torture, and I cut about 9 minutes off the episode by cleaning all of that out. That is wild, I thought I was a better talker than that. Anyway, progress is being made, so now I can have some fun playing with everything.
After cutting everything that was just filler space out, I listened to it again to make sure it still flowed smoothly, and I feel pretty good about where it is at. I do have some small issues with enunciation, but that is not something I can fix with editing, I just need to work on that in future episodes, and that will come with practice.
Creating preservingourpastime.com
This is progressing too, slowly, but it’s getting there. I installed WordPress on the domain and then had absolutely no clue what I was doing. A DKC consultation appointment came in clutch there. They showed me how to add pages to the site, how embedding things works, and a basic overview of how to put other things on the site. After that I started playing with it, put in pages for the StoryMap, Podcast, and some road trip ideas, and now I need to populate these pages with content. I have some preliminary road trip maps already made for the ballparks I researched, so that will start that page. I will put the podcast up once I finish editing and making the extra content to go with it. Embedding a StoryMap gave me a challenge, so I will have to figure out how to do that too. It seems fun to build out so far, and I’m sure it will be more so once I figure more features out.
Side Quests for the Project
During this stretch of the Fellowship, not one but two side quests came up. The first is that I started writing a paper to present my research from the StoryMap at the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference in Gettysburg, PA in mid March. That is pretty awesome and not at all stressful, but I have had help from my Archaeology professor to know how to format the paper and what kinds of things I should write about. Now just writing the paper with the research I have already done is pretty straight forward. I have been trying to find ways to emphasize baseball as something to care about while appealing to preservationists who may not care about baseball specifically, so that part had been a fun brain puzzle. I wrote a draft and am now working on refining the paper to make it coherent and captivating. Now that I’ve written something, I’m getting pretty excited for the presentation even though it is not for another month, but that allows me to make sure it is as good as it can be.
Side Quest number two is that one of my former history professors is teaching an American Studies class this semester called “Baseball in America” and this week is about Historic Ballparks. He asked me to come teach his class for a day (Friday, February 21 if you were wondering), so I agreed because he has taught a couple of my favorite classes in the past and it is a chance to show off what I have done so far with the project. I have been brainstorming that, and preparing ideas for how to best use it as a teaching tool in a classroom environment. Going to the actual class I just had my StoryMap and an outline of basic points, figuring I’d just talk about things and make it more of a discussion. I actually used the part of my Preservation Overview podcast episode outline about integrity as a guide for my discussion, using examples from the StoryMap of how the different aspects of integrity are used in different ballparks, and that seemed really well received by the class. After talking about integrity, I talked about adaptive reuse and how ballparks that are no longer in use can still serve a purpose for their communities. That was an even better discussion and the class had a lot of really good ideas. I am really proud of how well I did, and the professor also had positive things to say, teaching is cool, and I hope I get to do it more. I guess in a way that is what I am doing with the podcast, so that is a big added bonus.
Next Steps
For editing the Podcast, now that I have gotten all of the clunky audio jibber jabber out, I can start adding transition sound effects and other things to make it a polished episode. That should not take too long, and once that is done the audio file itself will be ready. I am going to use SoundTrap for that, since it is a little more intuitive for what I know already.
For the supplemental content, I need to put the final file into word to transcribe again, then edit it to make sure things are spelled right with good punctuation, then I need to cite my sources. I also need to write a little more context for some of the things I talked about to make it make more sense for the webpage for the episode, so all of that will take a little more time.
For the website, I need to put the StoryMap and Road Trips into those pages, and maybe write some stuff and add pictures for the homepage too so that it actually looks appealing for people that might want to use the site.
This seems like a lot, but it is manageable and I think will make it look and sound a lot better. That’s all for this update, baseball is fun.