Content Creation and Technical Skills

One assignment given in the Technology and Culture course was to create a blog about a television show that centers around, or heavily implements, technology. We had six posts to watch the entire first season of our choice of show. My blog about The Bletchley Circle analyzed the technology used in Britain during World War II. During the war, four women named Susan, Jean, Millie, and Lucy worked as codebreakers at Bletchley Park. Here, they used Enigma machines and the Colossus machine to crack the German army's secret codes. Fast forward to London in the 1950s where the women are back to their old jobs. Susan notices a string of murders happening in London and the surrounding area. Due to her codebreaking knowledge, she discovers the killings all follow a pattern. The show follows Susan's pursuit of the killer along with the help from her Bletchley Park friends.

Along with the blog assignment, this course pushed for students to learn how to create and edit videos. Most of my classmates, as well as myself, have never used video editing programs nor had the knowledge of how involved the process in video editing is. We could choose any topic that ties in with both technology and culture. I decided on creating a video about speedrunning. This is a subculture of the gaming community that aims at completing a video game as quickly as humanly possible. I touched on the complexity of the hobby as runners need to know probability and game mechanics as well as incredible hand-eye coordination. This video is not due until exam week (May 5th), but here is my rough draft that I am working on refining.

The DMS program at Lourdes has created a great relationship with WGTE Toledo. In my Media Writing class, my classmates and I were given the opportunity to write four stories for our own television program. We broke into four groups to write four stories about the COVID-19 pandemic and how it has impacted many aspects of society. After the stories were written and edited, we interviewed several staff members from Lourdes for their opinons on how COVID-19 affected areas such as mental health, media, education, and racial issues. Over the course of three class periods, my class recorded stand-up reporting, interviews, and transitions for each story. Since the project just finished, I do not have the completed video program yet. Here are some pictures of the equipment and set up instead.