ONE OF THE MOST REWARDING things I do is help young people find their voices. I watch this happen when with Ireland's Youth Media Team, inside primary school classrooms, and with third level students during studio sessions.
During the first weekend in October 2018, I helped YMT.fm as the teens covered the annual conference of the Teaching Council of Ireland. The big interview happened during the first evening when both President Higgins and his wife agreed to separate interviews. And our YMT crew captured everything without a single hitch. Their work is part of a playlist on Spreaker.
This is an evolving initiative with young and Irish voices, germinating in 2013 with founders Pamela O'Brien from LIT.ie and Conor Galvin from UCD.ie. I got involved with technical details and now look after web hosting, audio hosting, image storage, and recording equipment.
We use a variety of handheld microphones to capture the best audio in noisy environments. The Shure SM58 is a mainstay (so durable), along with our battery-powered Beyerdynamic shotgun mic (helpful on/off switch) and the ATR 2100 USB mic. All three of these microphones can be used with the handheld recording equipment used by the Youth Media Team. Most of the students prefer to line straight into their smartphones and then use the Spreaker Studio app to record directly up to the shared audio content management system.
I plan to break out a few case studies about creative media production, using them with third level students who are completing degrees in Creative Media & Design and Digital Animation. There's an interesting workflow worth reviewing, especially for those who want to create content in dynamic live environments.
[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative media for business on the Clonmel Digital Campus. The Youth Media Team was interviewing Aoibhinn Ni Shuilleabhain in the top shot during #feilte2018. You can hear the interview by tapping into Spreaker.com/ymtfm.]
