Prelude to Google 20%

I work at a small market and one of my coworkers is a senior in high school. At the start of the year, he told me about a new class he was taking this tear, called Innovation Tech. The premise of the class is that the students can work on any project they choose as long as it is approved by the teacher and involves technology. I had to know more about it, to see it for myself. I emailed his teacher and set-up a time where I could visit the class, interview some students, and interview the teacher himself.

Last week I conducted that interview and in doing so set the groundwork for my Google 20% Project. My plan is to create a one-of podcast about the class. It will be a mix of my narration plus the recorded interviews I conducted. Or at least it would have been, but yesterday I cleared my downloads folder and accidentally deleted the only copies I had of the recordings. I used Online Voice Recorder and downloaded the clips onto my chromeboook. It's no fault of that program, it was my negligence. That program is great and it is integrated with many other programs, such as audio/video editing.

It's really unfortunate because those interviews went great. The students were all very bright, well-spoken, and excited to talk about the things they had been working on. One had 3D-printed a phone holder for road trips. A group of three were working on an idea-sharing app. Solar-powered cell phone charger and pencil vending machine were some projects as well. I talked to the teacher for over thirty minutes and learned so much, not just about the class but teaching in general.

I now have a choice to make: either abandon this project, learning from it what I can OR I could pivot my project. It's really a shame I won't have that audio anymore, I don't think I can schedule another interview in the class. That would have been a great feature to my podcast. I can probably still interview the student who helped me get my foot in the door. The good news is I took notes on the interviews so I can probably still record much of my narration. So I think I will try to finish the project, with apologies to the teacher and students who helped me in vain. I think I'll add another interview as well, maybe a professor who could reflect on the principles seen in a project-based classroom.

For files as in life, always have a backup.