The Elements Unearthed: Our Discovery and Usage of the Chemical Elements

Podcast Episode Script Development Pages

   The purpose of these wiki pages is to provide a central location to edit the podcast episode scripts for The Elements Unearthed. The members of each team will collaborate to write and edit the script with input from their Subject Matter Experts. Links between these wiki pages and the central project blog (elementsunearthed.com) will allow viewers of that site to also view and comment on the scripts, but they will not be able to edit them. That function will only be available to team members. The final podcast video episodes will be uploaded to the blog site, then uplinked to YouTube, the Apple iTunes Store, and other podcast sites.

Project Description:

   The Elements Unearthed is a project developed by David V. Black and his students at Mountainland Applied Technology College (MATC) to document the discovery, history, uses, sources, mining, refining, and hazards of the chemical elements of the periodic table and important industrial materials. Teams of students have chosen sites in Utah that are related to chemical manufacturing and mining, such as the Ash Grove cement plant in Leamington Canyon, the Brush Wellman beryllium concentrating plant near Delta, and the Tintic Mining District around Eureka. During the 2007-08 school year, these teams researched the history and science of these sites, then visited them with video equipment to interview scientists and engineers and tour the plants. This footage has been edited together with narration, images, and animations to produce a series of podcast episodes. These podcasts have been extensively reviewed by other teams and audiences and are now being edited a final time for uploading to podcast aggregate sites for the general public to view.

   During this year, 2008-09, the media design students at MATC are creating a second round of podcast episodes. This time, they will increase the technical accuracy and the quality of their work through collaboration inside teams, between teams, and with a Subject Matter Expert (a scientist, engineer, or historian from the chosen sites).

Collaboration and Team Requirements: 

   In order to use this wiki, each member of the teams must follow this procedure:

   1 - Conduct individual research on the section of the topic you are assigned. For example, if your group is studying how synthetic diamonds are made, you may be assigned to write about the history of this material. You would start with a general source, such as Wikipedia, write notes in Microsoft Word on your research in your own words (any plagarism found will cause you to have to re-write this entire assignment). However, you cannot use Wikipedia as an authoritative source, only as a background source for initial exploration. From these general sources branch out to their references and links to more specific and authoritative sources, such as the historical pages at the websites of some of the synthetic diamond makers. In your notes, include complete URL information. Make certain all of your main points have references and links.

   2 - Once you have detailed notes in your own words in Microsoft Word, edit these notes into some kind of order that makes sense. For an historical topic, the order would be chronological. Make the format and tone easy to understand in conversational English but as succinct as possible; remember the entire podcast with interviews must be 12 minutes or less. Try to avoid passive tense and make the language as active and interesting as possbile.

   3 - At the bottom of your section, include a list of 4-5 questions that you still need to have answered that can be answered by your Subject Matter Expert and by the scientist, engineer, or historian you will interview.

   4 - In MS Word, select and copy your text with Cntrl-C. Then navigate to this Wiki and log in to your permitted page. Then paste (Cntrl-V) your text into the page. Edit for font, size, style, and appearance. Every place you need a link or refer to some fact, statistic, or other web page, you will select appropriate text (such as the Mountainland Applied Technology College text above) and click on the link tool in the toolbar above (the world with chain link icon). Choose URL for the type and then type in the correct complete URL for that link. Your selected text will now appear as an HTML link (blue with underline).

   5 - Once you have completed your section in the Wiki page, your other team members will read through your section and edit it, fixing or correcting anything that may be in error. They must click on every link and check out the factual accuracy of your writing and report on any suspected plagarism. Once everyone on your team has added their sections and edited everyone else's, then I will edit the whole thing for clarity. You will then contact your Subject Matter Expert by e-mail and have her or him do final editing and additions. I will look at it one more time for clarity, brevity, and continuity. At this point we will export the script back to MS Word and add notations for images, titles, animations, and other B-roll footage we will need to create.

   6 - Once the script is complete with notations, we will arrange the site visit, then take the video equipment to the site, interview a scientist or engineer, and have our Subject Matter Expert take us on a tour of the site. As part of our interview, we will ask the same questions to the scientist that you posed to the SME, so that we can get it in their own words. Your team will also be responsible for photographing, uploading, naming, and editing original photos of the site as well as finding images on the Internet, securing permissions, and cleaning them up for usage. The 3D modeling students or your own team members will create the titles and animations you will need, such as 3DEM animations zooming in on a mine sites geographical location using USGS data.

   7 - Once the tour is done, your team will capture the video and write up a complete transcript (word for word and sound by sound) of the video clips. This transcript will be added to your Wiki page so that the SME can go through it and make sure everything is accurate. We will then print it out and go through it together, deciding what sections to place where and how to cut up the interviews. These transcript sections will then be added to the developing script in MS Word. Once done there, we will bring it all back in to the Wiki page and replace our existing information with the final script and update all links. The SME will take one more look at the final script and sign off on it.

   8 - The narrated portions of the script will be read by a member of your group or by me (whoever can do the most interesting voice) into a microphone, denoised and cleaned up with audio software, then imported into Final Cut Pro. The video clips will be imported, cut, and added to the timeline along with titles, photos, charts, animations, etc. The final video will be viewed and evaluated by your teammates and the other students in the class and by me, re-edited, then exported into compressed format and sent to the Subject Matter Expert. The SME will view the video and make final suggestions, which you will implement. The final cut will be exported, converted to H.264 format, imported into Podcast Maker and metadata added (such as descriptions, frame captures, URL links, etc.), then published as a podcast to our blog site and uplinked to podcast aggregate sites and to YouTube.

Daily Log: 

   In addition to your team's main Wiki page, you will maintain an indivitual Wiki page under your name that will be a log of what activities you have completed each day we work on this project (Note: most of February will be spent on this project). You will be expected to make significant progress each day. For some of the critical days, especially the site visit and video editing periods, I expect you to go into quite a bit of detail on what you personally did, how well you thought the process went (including anything that could have been improved), and what you learned from the experience. Even on days that you are merely doing research or writing transcripts or cleaning up photos, I expect you to include details. A typical entry on one of these days might go something like this:

"Frid., Feb. 13, 2009: Today I spent 2:15 researching the techniques and equipment used at U. S. Synthetic to create diamond drill bits, including the band press and the cubic press. I downloaded and cleaned up several diagrams from their website that we have permission to use. I found that synthetic diamond jewels can be distinquished from real jewels only by their tendency to glow under UV light. Tomorrow I'm going to research the crystal deposition method of diamond growing."

   On the critical days leading up to, during, and after our tour your entries should be much more detailed and include the following things:

   1 - What activities you personally did, such as setting up the lights or cameras or microphones, running the back up camera, asking the questions, taking photographs, etc. Please do not take credit for something you did not actively participate in. Your grade will depend on how much you help out, and this Wiki is how you will report it.

   2 - On the day of the tour, you will include a description of what we did chronologically, including:

        A - What went well or went as planned - where we had enough time to get everything set up the way we wanted and how well our planning went.

        B - What didn't go well - what should have been better thought out, what we forgot, what we should change next time. Your comments here will help make the next tours more successful.

   3 - What you learned from the experience, such as the day before the tour learning how to run the Panasonic camera or how to set up microphones or lights, or the day after how to capture footage and write transcripts, or the day of what you learned about your subject that you didn't already know.

   I will let you know when these critical days are coming. Each of your daily entries will be done the last 10 minutes of class, with more time for the critical days. These logs will be extremely useful for the final evaluation of the project and will be used to determine your final participation grade. Those who do not prove their participation through regular logs will not pass off this group project and will have to do another project on their own to qualify for the course certificate or for an A in the class. This participation will count for 50% of your grade on this project. In addition, these logs will be used in the project main blog as progress reports and to enhance public and corporate interest in the project.

Brick Manufacturing     Household Chemicals     Liquid Air     Pottery Making

Stained Glass     Synthetic Diamonds     Blown Glass

Mr. Black's Page       About Us

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