ProjectDescriptionandGoals


Project description and Goals - Radio Project

The Duxbury Community Radio Project has been building for several years. The primary goal has been on training Duxbury youth in radio broadcast and technical problemsolving. In continuing this project, the goal is to create and maintain a consistently operating radio broadcast outlet. This broadcast entity, currently named Duxbury Community Radio, is aimed at the Duxbury geographic and demographic audience. At this time, all music and announcements have been written and performed by Duxbury residents. With the redesign of the Wright building, it is possible that this project will have a small studio in the Teen Center. It is possible to include adults in this project at a later time.

 

Active student involvement was successful during the 04-05 year with several publicly visible events. In preparation for these events, students wrote, recorded and broadcast radio programming created in the DHS Technology and Engineering labs and broadcast in the community. A description of these events can be found below:

 

Recycling Public Service Announcements

For this project, students wrote and recorded (11) 30 second public service announcements (PSA's). The original idea was to place a portable cd player in a building at the transfer station, change the cd periodically with new psa's reflecting changing events, initiatives and policies. Students recorded the first cd, then played it at a demonstration booth explaining their project at town meeting. The messages were played through a speaker system, and broadcast to several FM radios in the building. The students got positive coverage and feedback from the town press and citizens at the meeting. The completion of the transmitter at the transfer station has not been installed at this writing. We are still working on a secure location with consistent power. This broadcast would require occasional, maybe weekly updating. With this project, students got experience in many of the aspects of working on a startup project.

 

2005 Prom coverage

In preparation for this broadcast, students in the Spring 2005 Principles of Technology course wrote new PSA's on the themes of local events and responsible behavior. These announcements were stored only on a hard drive of a computer in the classroom. This computer was brought to the site of the broadcast and wired to the mixing board. The output of the mixing board was sent to a transmitter set to 91.7 FM. Two students were speaking on microphones while also selecting psa's and promotional announcements from the computer files. The students described the promenade, and conducted interviews. The recording of this broadcast was made on cassette and a minidisk recorder borrowed from a parent. The minidisk has apparently been erased, but the cassette is with the students.


Future Projects

Next phases on this project would build on the previous steps. Use of the existing psa's and knowledge of the process would enable a quicker setup.

 

Broadcasts

There could be live broadcasts like the Prom Coverage for special events and times when there are lots of people gathered in a certain area. We bring the transmitter and equipment to the gathered crowd. There could also be prerecorded broadcasts to areas where people tend to go in town, such as The Transfer station. Once a week or so, a new batch of recordings are put onto a device that plays to the transmitter.

 

Podcasts

One of the most interesting aspects of "radio" and communications is the new format of podcasts, or Personal Option Digital recordings. The user chooses how to listen to the recordings, on a computer, cd player, mp3 player or some other format. They are short segments, 1 minute to an hour, mostly around a half hour or less of music and commentary. For our podcasts, we could have local talent interviewing or giving information interspersed with psa's and promotional announcements. These would be posted on an internet website, and could be available for download by interested listeners. The broacasts prerecorded programming like recycling for the transfer station could be available in podcast form.


Tools Needed


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Materials Needs

 

Information Resources

 

Project Process

 

Project Photos