Teens excited about CAP-Cast, live Internet radio

BY KIRK STARRATT

kstarratt@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

A small but enthusiastic group of teens at the Wolfville C@P Site are excited to share their first audio podcasts with the world and eagerly await the launch of their own live Internet radio station.

Participant Douglas Spriggs, a 14-year-old student going into Grade 10 at Horton High, said his father showed him an ad for the podcast program and he thought there would be several interesting aspects, including working with MP3 files and journalism. “I just thought it would be cool to do podcasts about Wolfville and the community,” he said. “I think the Town of Wolfville is due to have a radio station.”

He said it’s intriguing that people all over the world, including those with a connection to the community, will be able to keep tabs on what is going on through the podcasts and, eventually, live Internet radio. Spriggs said he’s interested in digital music production and might even consider something along that line as a future career.

Likes to give back to the community

Participant Bailey Reid, a 17-year-old student going into Grade 12 at Horton High, said she likes working with computers and looks forward to creating MP3s. She became interested in attending the camp when she went to pick up her report card and saw a flyer. She said it gives her something productive to do over the summer break. “I like the aspect of giving back to the community,” she said, pointing out she is interested also in the aspect of performance that goes along with producing audio podcasts and Internet radio.

Reid said she thinks it will be fun to go live eventually with the radio station and have people all over the world listening to their bloopers.

She added she isn’t really interested in digital audio production as a career, but she does find it fun and thinks it’s a great hobby.

It sounded cool

Participant Laura Eye, a 17-year-old student going into Grade 12 at Horton High, said she found out about the summer camp from her friend Bailey Reid and thought it sounded cool. She said she likes that digital audio is a non-visual medium and appearance doesn’t really matter.

Eye said the idea of having people listening live to their Internet radio station is exciting. “Our whole generation is in love with technology,” she said. Eye hopes someday to have a career as a voice actor or doing voice-over work.

Wolfville C@P Site summer youth intern Katherine Duncan, an engineering student at Acadia University who is running the “Wolfville C@P-Cast” teen summer camp program along with C@P site manager Nick Kasteljanov, said the initiative is being put on as a collaborative effort of the Annapolis Valley Regional Library and the Wolfville C@P Site.

As of a couple of weeks ago, they are releasing weekly audio podcasts with a community theme. They plan to interview local residents and inform people about community events. She said they currently have no sponsor, but they’ll be looking for one in the future.

The purpose of creating the podcasts is to prepare the participants for live community Internet radio. You can listen to the podcasts at www.valleylibrary.ca/wocap/capcast.

Live shows, live radio “Our goal will be to put live shows on the live radio station,” she said. Because there are so few teens involved at this point, she said the participants seem even more excited because they feel like they’re going to have their very own radio station.

The podcast camp began July 7 and will run until the end of August. Duncan said they are open to new participants; the more the merrier. The group meets every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 2-5 p.m. at the Wolfville C@P Site, upstairs in the Wolfville Library building, just off Elm Street. They are considering holding night workshops for adults to come and share stories to include in the podcasts.

The idea for the Wolfville community podcasts and radio came from Kasteljanov, who was involved in setting up an Internet radio station in his hometown in Europe.