Develop and Extend Critical and Creative Thinking Skills

Giordana Caputo and Emma Couch kicked off our Youth Conference sessions with their topic “Keeping your program fresh – On-air and Online”. Giordana is currently the CEO of the Community Media Training Organisation (CMTO) and Emma is the national training manager at the CMTO.

They began the session with an interactive voting experience for the audience via voxvote, an intuitive step forward beyond the old fashioned hand raising techniques of the past to learn more about their audience. They asked everyone how they were today, and were pleasantly surprised that over 80% of the audience was feeling “great”. The questions continued, going into more depth about the people of the audiences role at their stations and the actual stations themselves. The point of this exercise was to establish the idea of critical thinking and to learn more about the audience.

After giving a brief history of her radio career, Emma directed our attention to the importance of reflection and learning about your audience. She continued with some video content of vox pops of people who had completed the CMTO training, outlining the core ideas behind why media training is important. She also referred to the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) as being a great organisation for community broadcasters to be a part of.

Why critically review your program/content?

• Its easy to do
• Discover new ideas for your content
• Receive validation for what you are doing
• Make positive changes for the benefit of your audience

Emma made the point that what we choose to broadcast on air should not be the same as what we choose to post online. The importance of analytics is a key difference when considering online content.

Some tips for making your online content travel:

• Use subtitles with headliner or clips
• Use quality images and video
• Access free image editing software like Snapseed and Canva
• Be organised with Google Drive
• Get creative with apps like Lapse it or 3D Brush

She also mentioned some great audio and visual editing software such as Headliner and Hindenberg. She wrapped up the talk with a demonstration on how to perfect your online content with the aforementioned software.

“We can be as flexible as you like in our delivery” Emma Couch telling the audience about the benefits of training CMTO.

Resources:

• The CMTO website
• The AMARC website
• The Google Drive website
• The Canva website
• The Headliner website
• The Hindenberg website