Rockylou Productions will be guest hosting today’s LouDown EP:30, by giving the DS106zone participants an opportunity to listen to The Devil’s Hairground podcast referenced in past episodes of the LoDown [EP17 & EP23].

This is episode 4 of Amber’s Obruni (white person) adventures as an AFS exchange student to Takoradi, Ghana, Africa in 2000. In this first of a two part story reliving Amber’s arduous and humorous experience to an African beauty salon, you’ll meet the infamous ‘woman in blue pants’. Unfortunately, we don’t introduce the ‘antelope man’ until part 2, All’s Hair In Love And War. You can view photos and listen to the entire series of podcasts at: www.rockylouproductions.com/Obruni.html

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The DS106zone is about to come to an end with Prof. Groom posting his expectations for week 5 yesterday. What a great idea to have the audio self-reflection assignment as part of the final exam. I’m looking forward to getting to know the UMW students, and hopefully a few more of the open-onliners as well.

We have only 5 more episodes to go to make it to the originally planned 35. Tomorrow [EP31] Christina Hendricks will be guest hosting from Australia, and on Thursday [EP32] CogDog himself will be joining us once again. We’re not sure what will happen on Friday [EP33]. I’d personally enjoy highlighting some of the UMW self-reflections, but I’ll need you to post them by Wed. evening in order to produce a podcast for Friday.

On Saturday, [EP34] we have a very special guest host scheduled with a live broadcast on DS106 Radio. TalkyTina will be taking on the #pretenders, and all will be revealed.

Don’t miss LoDown 34’s live broadcast. Talky Tina Reveals All!

Scottlo has totally disappeared now.  He’s not even posting to his Scottlo Radio Blog. Maybe he really has joined a guerilla sect in the Syrian civil war [EP27] and is arming rebel groups instead of arming us with his audio tips and tricks. How is it that Rockylou has become the “official” coordinator for the remainder of the LoDowns? CogDog has made some mention of Scottlo totally Tom Sawyering his way out of podcasting. Expect some smack-talk when Alan Levin takes the mic on Thursday’s episode 32 of the “Lou” Down. (Like the new thumbnail image?)

So…. Rockylou is hittin’ the road.  Yesterday  she was visiting with Scottlo over in Saudia Arabia [Ep28]. Today she’s chattin’ it up with John Johnston in Glasgow, Scotland.  And on Wednesday [Ep31], Christina Hendricks will be joining the LouDown from downunder in Melbourne, Australia.

A big thanks to DS106 open-onlinerJohn Johnston who was the first to respond to the call for volunteers to sign-up for a self-reflection chat with Rockylou.  You can listen to the 5 min highlights distilled from our conversation in his DS106 audio self-reflection.

Talk about serendipity…. John produces a regular podcast with his co-host David Noble on Edutalk (Educational Audio and the Home of Radio Edutalk) and shared some tips of the trade with this interviewing & podcasting newbie.

When all was said and done, we had a great “15 min” conversation.

• While I was sitting outside Skyping from my grandson’s backyard as he played with his water table. [Tip: Use music or recorded ambient background audio to help mask the empty spaces left during editing.]
• Our voice levels were surprisingly well balanced – NOT. [Tip: Use the Levelator software to adjust the audio levels when you have variations from one speaker to the next. John talks more about this on his blog post.]
  
• Recording our conversation with a Skype add-on called Call Recorder. [Tip: Turn ON your recording software.  You never know how you might be able to use the audio file in the future.]

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You’re also welcome to sit in on our entire 40 min unedited chat.

As scottlo fades into the airwaves and twitter feeds [EP:25] Rockylou has stepped up once again to fill in on the LoDown. Jim Groom and Mikhail Gershovich posited a number of theories yesterday in episode 27 for Scott’s sudden and unexplained departure – from joining a rebel group to getting a much deserved PAID gig with one of the big MOOCs.  But he hasn’t totally abandoned us. Thanks to the wonderful world of recorded audio, we’re able to listen in on a recent Skype chat between the Lo and the Lou to witness the birth of the audio self-reflection project.

Scott was concerned about the amount of work that it would take to produce and post the DS106 self-reflections. But, as I surmise in this previously recorded chat, I’ve only had three submissions so far, four if you count mine. Not a whole lot of work to do here.

So where are you all? We’d love to know who you are, how you found yourself in DS106, and why you’re still here.  Especially the UMW students in this insanely compressed 5 week summer course.  I’m making it easy.  You can send me a tweet @rockylou22 , fill out the contact form to submit your own 3-5 min audio file, or schedule a Skype chat with Rockylou.  You can even earn stars with AudioAssignments1119.

And, thanks to Sean’s twitter comments [Twitter Feed] there’s a new audio assignment [AudioAssignments1121] for those of you who can’t stomach all those glowing self-reflections about what’s so great about DS106. Have a little fun and make a parody by recording a 3-5 minute “self-reflection” from the point of view of a disgruntled student, teacher, or open-onliner, etc.  Start by creating an obviously fictitious name and location, then let ‘er rip.  Maybe use a different voice, and some strange background music.  Provide a thumbnail image that will grab the reader’s attention when they scroll down the list.  Here’s an example of a self-reflection you can poke fun at.   

• Kudos to Jennifer for the DS106 bumper introducing this episode.
• Link to mentioned animated GIF of DJ’s Daddy
• Links to mentioned Rockylou & Amber interviews on the LoDown (EP17, EP23)
• DS106 Mashup at the end created by yours truly. 

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Rockylou’s (Rochelle Lockridge‘s) first foray into guest hosting the DS106 LoDown (episode 17) was a success.  However, the original recorded “interview” between my daughter Amber and I, chatting about our experience producing our own podcasts, provided us with almost 30 minutes of airtime.  That was too long for the editing, post-production phase with the time constraints I was under.  And I sense our listeners aren’t so keen on sitting down and listening to something that long either.  So we decided to split it into two parts.

Amber is the author of our Obruni podcasts, based on short stories and letters she wrote as an AFS exchange student to Ghana, Africa in 2000.  In part two she shares the differences in writing for reading and writing for audio. We then pick up our sound effect conversation from part 1.  I was surprised to learn that her initial reaction when she sits down to decide on what sound effect goes where is:

“PANIC… I don’t know how I pulled this off last time… I’m never going to be able to do this again.”

…especially during those times when we needed to create our own sound effects like her head hitting a pillow at the end of the day, or her agitated shuffling feet as she tries to sit still on a stool during her marathon hair braiding experience.

Amber’s advice?

“You really have to go for it. You can’t hold back.  It has to be like a small child trying to imitate a sound. You just have to let it rip!”

Thanks again to scottlo for giving us this opportunity to guest host not just one, but two episodes of the LoDown.

Easy Link to this podcast.

You can listen to all of the Obruni Podcast episodes with the audio player below. Photos and scripts are also available.  Episodes referenced in part two of our conversation:

• The “Antelope Man” (The Entertainer) in EP05- All’s Hair in Love and War
• The “woman in blue pants” in EP04- Devil’s Hairground
• Gulping of a Coke in EP01 – Obruni: Take it Up
• Head hitting the pillow in EP02- Obruni Ko Skuul
• Agitated shuffling feet in both EP01 and EP04