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tags: designLab
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# 20220909 designLab for EXPOS20 Willa Brown, Remembering the Civil War

## the plan

For Willa Brown's Expos course, we'll be launching a location-based podcasting/mapping assignment with an activity that we need to design today. The basic steps of the activity are

1. MK goes to class and does a really simple intro to podcasts, connecting to the Expos stuff they're learning next week (articulating problems, detailed description of historical data, avoiding too-quick-assumptions in the analysis of evidence)
2. The students get assigned a specific Harvard building to observe. They walk there in small groups and record some of their observations while on location, then return to the LL.
3. Back in the LL, they perform a live podcast that involves clips recorded on location, a live V.O. (over PA) back in the LL, a music bed launched from Logic, and some sort of maps and photos integrated by way of the chromakey setup.

**Today** we need to design and test a number of potential elements and mechanics:

1. we need nicely designed and printed instructions for the students on
- where to go
- what to do when they get there
- how to get to the LL once they're done
2. we need to do the actual activity (along with all the walking) and time how long it takes us to do it
3. we need to think about whether there's story-building activity they'll do back in the LL, or if they'll have to arrive completely ready to go
4. we need to design the visual materials, studio and ATEM setup required to have them perform their location-based podcasts that integrate visual elements like photos of the buildings/objects they're describing and maps showing where they were
- we should think about taking photos today and sharing files on slack
- we need to think about the map background and share visual models

## notes from the designLab

let's all type things here

## Reference

### Workshop Plan

* Set up the workshop in their classrom at Sever
* group students
* assign locations by passing out cards
* Send students into the yard to their assigned location (locations to be finalized on Monday) to take photos and record audio
* The front of Widener
* Mem hall transept
* Matthews Hall - brass plaque to the Indian College
* [crimson article](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/3/24/harvard-indian-american-native/)
* [page from and old course called "Inventing Harvard"](https://legacy.sites.fas.harvard.edu/~hsb41/Inventing_Harvard/indian_college.html)
* Radcliffe
* other?
* Reconvene in the LL so each group can present
* Their job is to describe with a photo what snagg-ed them. We’ll have a map in the studio and they’ll have to talk about in the microphone.

## Context
Framing - *all the time you’re engaging with arguments and you don’t realize it because they sound like narratives or stories. They're arguments about what matters, what’s important.*
You’re encountering a tiny tip of the iceberg when you listen to a podcast. [The next part of course is the research paper, which is the rest of the iceberg. The students will work on research papers, and then turning them back into tiny tip of the icebergs again for their final project.]

Over the weekend, pre LL workshop - students listen to [The Fugitive episode of Uncivil](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/uncivil/z3hdrm).

*What does it mean to go look at an object, ask questions, and then find evidence? As opposed to starting with an already-drawn conclusion and then looking for evidence to support that?*

Students' homework for Wednesday's session is looking over their notes and sending a writeup of their question about the tour, and two possible explanations.