Digital Humanities Club: Week 5

High school students and team leader Tiara Perkins work with Audacity.

On Wednesday, October 11, the high school students worked with Audacity – an online editing software program. The students took time utilizing the program and tried experimenting with the kinds of effects that they could add to audio files.

Our team leader Gaige Crowell talked to two of the high school students Ryan and Jaylen about their experiences work with the program. Ryan said that “There's a lot you can do to sound using Audacity. You can change the pitch and make things sound cooler.”

Jaylen told Gaige that the program “helps me realize that there is a lot of things you can do to audio.” He said he had first heard about Audacity from his older brother.

Team leader Amelia Williams talked to high school student Tyreese about his experiences participating in the various activities in the program.

“I found out that using technology can be really complicated sometimes,” said Tyreese. “I also discovered that there are a lot of things you can do with technology that I was not aware of. “

When team leader Tiara Perkins talked to student Louis about his experiences participating in the program, he discussed his future aspirations. The experience of working with the audio editing program “made me want to become a game designer,” he said. “Audacity especially made me think of game designing because I'm working with different voices.”

Week #5 reflection from graduate student, Rae'Jean Spears:

This week’s meeting with the East St. Louis Charter school was maybe the best we have had thus far. The students were able to take audio samples and edit them however they saw fit. It was really cool to see how each student chose to alter the poems. I look forward to watching students express their creativity in similar ways in the weeks to come.

Related:
• The East St. Louis Digital Humanities Club