Jenna Walker: This was a very interesting interview. Learning about how someone started with a typewriter and moving to a computer is pretty interesting. Coming from an art degree myself, writing wasn’t that common unless it was for a different class. The ease of current technology seems to be a big theme that is discussed compared to some of the other technologies that have been used that the interviewee describes. It sounds like it used to be a very laborious task to write papers because you would draft it by hand and then move to the typewriter whereas now it can mostly be on the computer. Honestly, even now, I never really draft directly onto a computer unless I’m absolutely confident in what I’m writing about. I prefer to draft on paper and then type it. This is definitely a good example of an oral history project because it talks about how we’ve changed in technology and how it helps current college students.

Emmalina Krist: I really liked this interview. It was really fascinating to learn how someone started to go through creating webpages through the original coding and teaching themselves to do so and then trying to adjust with the changing ways the internet worked in order to keep using them. What was really interesting was how the interviewee talked about how the newest ways to create a website are actually pretty difficult because they are mostly designed for people who have no experience in creating a website. Since this user has experience in coding it was interesting to hear that they didn’t care for current website creating websites because some of them block the user from accessing the backdoor information to be more customizable. I think this was a great oral history assignment because it covered so many different themes and topics and would be something I would be willing to listen to the entire interview.

Bethany Smyth: It was really interesting to see what Bethany changed from when I originally heard the raw file of the interview. The audio is way more cohesive and the audio is all around the same volume instead of having to turn it up and down constantly. The topics that are discussed are interesting in how music technology changes and how that technology changes how people act socially. Probably one of the interviews that brings up a lot of different themes and topics that would bring up more topics that could be discussed. However the music echoing in the background along with the hollow sound of the audio made it really distracting to listen to towards the end of the interview. Theme-wise it was a really interesting assignment but more of the cohesiveness needed to be worked on.

Final Reflection

‘Digital Influence’ made by Shengjie.wu

For the final blog post, I am going to listen 3 different student’s interview. It is interesting to listen those interviews, and I learn a lot of stuff after listening the interviews.

The first audio story that I listened was made by Jenna Walker. In her audio, she interviewed her grandma about the experience of using typewriter, hand write, and type on computer. Jenna’s grandma is big on writing and reading, and she mentioned that she is currently in a writing class. She had experience on using typewrite and computer. As she mentioned, she prefer to type on computer rather that to type on typewrite, because computer can automatically find out the spelling mistake and grammar mistake. However, you need to go back and check the typing paragraph when you type on typewrite. It is a good example of oral history. Jenna’s grandma showed her personal experience on using different typing tools orally.

The second audio story that I listened was made by Ashley Cole. In her audio, she interviewed her father about the photo development in his experience. Ashley father mentioned a car phone, payphone, and cell phone in this interview. As her father mentioned that he needed to check his messages every time when he used payphone and this was the only way to communicate with others with payphone at that time. When the cell phone showed up, communication became easier. He can use cell phone to send a message of phone call when he needed. It is a good example of oral history. Ashley’s father shared his personal experience on using different phones orally.

The third audio story that I listened was made by Liz Kurtz. In her audio, she interviewed her father about digital influence on his architect career. Liz’s father mentions computer, AutoCAD and Revit in this video. He used hand drawing for architect at high school and college. However, he mostly used digital such as AutoCAD for architect when he got his first job. He mentioned that it was convenient to use digital to share and make architect in his career. It is a good example of oral history. Liz’s father shared his personal different experience on using computer to make architect and drawing architect on paper.

In this oral history project I choose to interview my father to learn more about how technology has evolved throughout his life. Overall, the interview went well with a few errors that I wish I could have solved prior to recording. Most of what my dad had told me throughout our interview I had known but, he included a lot of stories that made the explanation of these various technologies interesting. Within our interview we mostly talked about how the evolution of  television and cell phones effected his life at my age. I felt that this would have created an interesting contrast to compare my life to. Learning the vast difference between technologies my father had used in college and the technologies I use today, makes me wonder what the future of technology might look like.

When editing I decided to listen to different parts of the audio story to decide which topics were most interesting, which topics were related, and if there were any audio problems present within the story. When conducting the interview I notice my dad pausing and taking breaks in between sentences. To ensure that the final audio story flowed well, I edited the empty audio clips out. Although this was a long process, it helped in reducing the length of the interview and making it more precise. I also made sure my interview stuck to a single topic when editing it to ensure that it made the most sense when listening to it from start to finish. Lastly, I added fade-in/fade-out effects and subtle background music because the interview itself sounded pretty monotone.

When interviewing I made sure I was in a small, furnished room to prevent from any echo that may be heard in the recording. I positioned my father directly across from me and used a laptop and phone to record. I wanted to make sure I had two audio files in case one of them failed to record or just had poor sound quality. At first I tried to use the audio from the laptop but the difference between my voice volume and my fathers voice volume varied significantly. Another problem I ran into was trying to use the audio recording on my phone because it recorded in a M4A format which could not be opened in the editing software I was using. I used a converting program to convert the M4A to a WAV in order to begin the editing process.

Overall, when creating an audio project like this, it is more than likely that you will run into some sort of problem which I learned through conducting the interview and editing. I not only learned the differences between technology in the past compared to now but, I also learned how these changes effected my father when he was growing up. This gave me understanding of what it was like to grow up in an older generation as the stories my dad shared with me helped illustrate that.

For my interview I wanted to know about what my brother thought about something that I thought was pretty relevant as technology becomes more and more prominent in education settings. Turns out that it was not really a topic that he knew a lot about and so to make the interview relevant to the both of us I tried to let him talk about his experiences as he felt, and then from there my job was to connect them to the topic I was aiming for. In the end I felt like it does have the exchange of dialogue I wanted it to sound like it had. What surprised me the most about the interview was that the subject of digital literacy is really present in school lessons but there is no explicit talk about digital literacy being important.  Something that came up alot with me having to point us there is the way in which in we use smartphones as a proxy for laptops in school. As well as the internet is a very important tool in school that really any device that has internet capabilities is something that is very useful, like mentioned interview (the use of Chromebooks and iphones). I tried to edit my oral history just in a very simple manner just trying to add music and at the end to signify the start and the end. Also I added music so that it didn’t just start with talking even though there was an introduction to what the recording it about I felt it was still an important element I wanted to add. During the interview I did not ask the questions in the order that they are in the presented in the final interview. I wanted to create a more linear sounding interview where we start talking about his experiences at traditional school and then ending with thoughts on the new school he goes to, which is an alternative school.

For my oral history project I ended up interviewing my friend’s older brother who is a wsu alumni and was visiting. I had never met him before conducting the interview so it was a little awkward at first but towards the middle of the overall interview there was more conversational dialogue and we both started to feel more comfortable. During the interview he had a lot to say about his personal relationship with technology, such as his smartphone and his laptop and how much he has benefited from the two. As a restaurant manager he discussed the importance that computers have had on the restaurant industry. I did not really get all too surprised during this interview. I was expecting most of the answers he gave, although I did appreciate his personal opinion about technology in general and its affects on the newer generations. I tried to apply in my final edited copy of the interview a mix of his personal thoughts on technology in general as well as incorporating his thoughts on the technology in his workplace. As soon as he mentioned the technology in his job I tried to bring it up as often as it came up in conversation so that he could build on it and talk about his experiences.

I was really inspired but he story corps oral history in terms of how they just gave you just the response of the person being interviewed. I wanted to be more like a story and less like an interview. So when I began editing I knew I wanted music to make the audio sound more clean. So I wanted it to be as much as possible, him telling his story about technology and how it has affected his life personally and in his workplace. In the interview it was very all over the place in terms of the things we talked about, so finding and keeping only the parts that I wanted to keep was a bit challenging, but I think the parts that made the cut are the most cohesive and summarize his thoughts on technology.

Posted on December 1, 2015 by Elizabeth O’Dowd in Best Practices, Image Taken From Bing.com

For my final reflection of the Oral History projects, I listened to three different student’s interviews with their parents. It was interesting to listen to the conversations they had about historical technology and how it has changed over the past decades.

The first audio story that I chose to listen to was from Ashley Cole. Ashley spoke with her dad about cellphones, which involved conversation about payphone and how when he was younger, he would have to take time out of his day to go check messages. Mr. Cole brought up some interesting points about different kinds of cellular devices that dated back to when he was younger. Ashley’s father is in his 50s, so the age difference between both Ashley and her father made for an interesting report because there have been so many advancements in technology since he was younger. Cellphone advancements in technology has changed Mr. Cole’s life and ours because society has gone from payphones, for example, to iPhones which has made communicating with others a lot faster and eliminates the need to go to a store just to get in contact with someone. This story is a good representation of oral history because Ashley focused her conversation on cellphones and how they have developed over the past 50+ years.

The second audio story that I listened to was from Tori Bredy. Tori focused on computer technology and interviewed her mother who is a teacher for an 8th grade classroom. When Mrs. Bredy began teaching, in 1979, technology was limited on the computers and did not have as many programs as we do now. The specific piece of technology that Tori focused on was a Chromebook and the programs that have advanced to make teaching easier. Computers back then were limited but now, most students have their own laptops that they can bring to class. The most interesting and relevant information that I found in this interview was how relatable it is. This is because when I was in middle school, there were more than enough computers for my classmates and I to use. I couldn’t imagine a learning environment where programs such as Adobe, which did not come out until 1982, 4 years after Tori’s mom began teaching. Since the 1980s, programs such as adobe and grading cites like Blackboard were limited. Microsoft was one of the biggest programs that were used before the 21st century. This is a good example of oral history because Tori and her mother talked about how computer programs, specifically, help Mrs. Bredy with her grading in her classroom.

The third audio story that I listened to came from Aidan Aumell. Aidan focused on cellphones and how they impacted his mother’s experience when she attended Washington State University. He focused on the value of receiving phone calls in the 80s verses the 21st century. One good question that he asked was “how did you know who was calling you on a landline.” This was an interesting question because now, our cellphones tell us exactly who is calling, regardless of if the phone number is in the contacts app or not. It was hard to focus on the main topic of this conversation in this interview because it felt repetitive and didn’t go into a lot of depth about cellphones; it mainly focused on WSU and how phones impacted different aspects of Mrs. Aumell’s life. I do not believe that this is a very good example of oral history because Aidan mainly focused on the past and cellular technology in a broad aspect. I wish I would have heard how Aumell’s experience with cellphones has changed over the years since she was at WSU. Instead, the focus was mainly about communication between Mrs. Aumell and her friends and how they communicated (letters, landlines, cellphones, etc.) I would have loved to hear more about the specific phones she used then and now.

After listening to these projects, I gained a greater knowledge as to how specific technology has changed over the decades (cellphones and computer programs). My favorite aspect of these Oral History projects were to hear the emotions that the parents expressed when reminiscing in the technology that they used before the advancements made.

For my interview, I chose to interview my grandma on what it was like to grow up using a typewriter and other methods. Then seeing what it was like to transition to computers and how she had to adjust. The interviewing process was extremely easy. I interviewed my grandma so already we were comfortable with each other so the conversation was able to flow much more fluidly than if I was talking to someone I did not know well. Throughout my interview it is clear that we were having an active conversation because this is something she is genuinely interested about. She is big on writing and reading, which is why she mentioned that she is currently in a writing class. She has experienced first-hand how writing technologies have developed and what it was like to have to adapt to using new things like computers. Nothing really surprised me during the interview other than the types of typewriters she brought up, like the one she wished she had but couldn’t. I really liked how she mentioned that she was enrolled in history classes and used the computers after work to help her get through them with more ease. That showed that she wanted to get comfortable with using and making the transition from a typewriter. From her experience in college to now, you can tell that she tried hard to become relaxed with using computers and how since they were becoming a big part in everyone’s day to day lives. There were two prominent themes in this interview. It starts out with what she used when she was going through school, how she had to utilize the writing technology, and how it was a process writing, transcribing, using a Xerox, etc. Then the focus shifted to how she thought computers were working for today’s society. While she is envious of the tools we have now, she is still appreciative of how writing has advanced; although she mentions that some authors prefer to hand write some of their works. She was extremely knowledgeable on this topic and questions I asked, which is why she was a perfect candidate for this interview. I decided to edit the audio story I turned in because sometimes she took long pauses or would start to giggle so I cut out some of those to have it flow better; she took the time to thoroughly think about her answers which I was appreciative for. Her opinions are very clear throughout this audio story, which shows that she actually cared about what she was saying and having a conversation about.