LEAP #1 REFLECTION
Throughout this project, I was able to learn more about a social media platform, TikTok, a platform I knew almost nothing about. Through creation, I learned some new techniques for developing and editing videos. TikTok is incredibly popular among my eighth grade students and I wanted to use the project as a way to learn about the platform they are so immersed in. I downloaded the application and explored to learn more about how the platform worked and how people interacted with the platform and each other.
I chose to review and analyze a TikTokker whose content I was interested in, so I chose Dave Jorgenson who runs the Washington Post’s TikTok account. I had seen some of his videos before and thought they were silly and found the Post’s strategy of venturing into the TikTok platform interesting. I took a look through the TikTok videos and before I knew it, an hour had elapsed. Yikes! I can see why people get sucked in - it was so easy to just keep watching video after video. The videos were short enough to make it feel as though you weren’t wasting too much time, but it all began to add up.
Critically engaging with Jorgenson’s content brought to mind some intriguing questions about the state of journalism in the digital age. Do these silly TikToks trivialize the news? However, most young people are getting their news from social media, so are these videos helpful by meeting people where they are? Do the videos make news and journalism relevant to the young users of TikTok? Or, more cynically, are they a blatant cash grab from an antiquated industry?
For the creation process, I knew I wanted to show one of Jorgenson’s full TikTok videos, but I had trouble showing the video via different Screencasting tools. Nothing I used seemed to look very good, so I elected to use iMovie to create my “screencast.” I am familiar with iMovie and I knew how to include both videos and stills as well as voice overs using the editing software. I didn’t want to show the same video repeatedly, so I needed to decide what stills and images to show. After some consideration, I decided to show a mix of stills and videos. During the process, I learned how to video record my iPhone which was surprisingly easy and will come in extremely useful in the future. Learning to do that feels like I unlocked a new level technologically, but it also made me wonder what other easy tips and tricks I don’t know about on my phone.
I wrote my script and edited it significantly to meet the word limit and then tinkered with the audio recording tool on iMovie. Initially, I thought I could just record myself reading the whole script in one full take, but I quickly realized that one voice clip made it difficult to time fluidly with video clips. Consequently, I ended up recording short voice over clips which made aligning the video and voice together much easier.
Overall, this project challenged me to engage with a platform I was not very comfortable using and enab.ed me to learn about media creation choices by engaging in the creative process. Throughout most of the process I was not in my “comfort zone” - creating or exploring TikTok - but, as the saying goes, “learning happens outside your comfort zone.”