Category: Student Posts

The podcast we produced focuses on a video game Plague Inc. that is recently on fire due to the Corona-outbreak. It was the first podcast I had made as being the main producer and was also the first podcast I had made apart from the group-mates.

However, the producing process was much more efficient than I thought it would be.
Firstly, we played this game separately. The assistant producer Wenyi and I, luckily, were playing this game for the first time, which contributed to our main discussion about how this game is influencing people under the pandemic.

With the experience that we accumulated from the last podcast, I set an outline with google document with four main sections we are going to talk about: the brief introduction about the game, the gaming mechanism, our personal gaming experience, and its impact on the real-world. According to this outline, Wenyi and I put our thoughts separately, complementing each other’s points. With the brief idea in mind, we met Dr. Morgen on Zoom to enrich the content on video games’ real-life impact and to add more details like a little warning at the beginning of the episode. Wenyi and I also held several Facetime meetings to allocate the parts we were going to record. Because we are neither native speakers, we prepared ourselves a rather solid script, specifying every point we were going to mention on the google doc.

Prepared for the recording, we first finished the introduction and the mechanism part quickly and tried to record the discussion part conversationally. However, we two computer-illiterate people cannot figure out how to record our dialogue via phone call, and the sound quality via the zoom meeting is too bad that the voice was not even coherent. We finally decided to write the script sentence by sentence and joint them by Audacity to imitate a dialogue. Because Audacity is a straightforward app, and I helped with refining the last podcast, I finished editing the speaking part within two to three hours in total. Though the conversational part is not that interactive so well as when we recorded together last time, it is still smooth and qualified in the limited condition. Lastly, the line producer Kimberly proofread and added sum-up and background music.

Whereas, at this point, writing the podcast reflection, I finally find out how dumb I am that I sent the pre-edited audio file, without the background music and the conclusion, to Dr. Morgen.

I take making this podcast as an enjoyable writing experience. The purpose of composing this time, entertaining the public as well as sharing my view, is novel. It is relaxing to chat with a friend about the game that we both appreciate; at the same time, it’s also exciting, but a little anxious, to be aware of there are unacquainted audiences on the internet. Other than the great experience producing this episode, I also realize that I am a computer-illiterate careless dumb, and I should probably make revisions on that ASAP.

The making of Plague Inc. podcast took notably less time with a written script. This is the second podcast of our group, and the experience from our first podcast proved to be helpful. Cherie chose Plague Inc. because of the virus outbreak. And due to isolation, our episode depends more on narration and explanation rather than dialogue. Again, we worked effectively as a group: Cherie as the producer, Kimberly as the line producer and me as the assistant producer. 

About plagues we had plenty to talk about. We are in one. In the meeting with Dr. Morgen, we were encouraged to explore the idea of using Plague as an educational tool. I found the idea interesting. I have never thought of using a video game to learn or teach. As China realized the severity of coronavirus, it spread information through news channels, official websites and social media platforms. Scientific articles from official government accounts and interactive graphs on certified websites are easy to find, but fake news still gains an audience. Educating the general public of basic science knowledge is crucial these months. The analysis of Plague gave us insight to the probability of using video games as an educational tool, and we hope to share the insight in our podcast. 

As we researched on the game, we did find interesting connections between Plague Inc. and epidemics in the world, and how CDC has invited the game developer to speak at the institution. Beside sharing these facts, we also compared the plague in the game and real diseases. I suggested to incorporate some complicated science vocabulary in, and immediately tell the audience that this is not the way to explain things. It sounds effective in the podcast. This emphasized one of the arguments we tried to make, about how formal writing is not practical in communicating with the general public. Scientists are taught to always use formal language, while at times this leads to knowledge being isolated. As in the podcast, I resisted the temptation of pouring formal language onto the script we created. 

If there were not a quarantine, I believe our podcast would be more lively. Zoom and FaceTime restricted our means to communicate. For podcasts out of quarantine, we could incorporate more dialogue, and deliver ideas in a more easily understood way.