The week 8 workshop had a number of focuses, such as finishing the collaborative contract, watching and discussing audio essay techniques through a RadioLab example and working on our annotated bibliographies.

The collaborative contract for project brief 4 was used as a project management document, as well as evidence of collaboration and initial planning. It helps outline the project statement, group goals and group governance for the project, such as communication, meeting times, and procedure and individual roles. It provides an outlet to discuss how the project will unravel and ways resolve problems with negotiation or other unforeseen problems.

For our contract we outlined our initial thoughts on the project, which was difficult as we didn’t have a solid grasp as to what we should cover for our audio and video essays. We initially planned to cover social media and its role as an institution, but we gradually changed our ideas and focussed on ACMI.

This workshop also covered a RadioLab example, which discussed dolphins and sleeping patterns. We discussed some features that the show utilises, such as hosts, interviewers and interviewees, stories and structure. We noticed the use of sound effects was constant throughout the show, such as brain waves, drills, dolphin noises and sleeping sounds. The information they covered was presented in multiple ways, where the hosts act as the leading speaker and the audience towards guest speakers, such as experts and interviewees.

The final aspect of class we worked on our annotate bibliographies. Like the annotated contract, we did not have a solid grasp on where our project was headed. We initially researched social media topics, such as trends and its role in media and institutions. This was an interesting perspective, but we eventually changed our minds and focussed on ACMI and local media institutes.