About Me
I'm Mel Drake, a Master of Educational Technology student at the University of British Columbia. I've created this site as part of a Final Energy Literacy Project for ETEC565E - Energy Literacy in Society & Culture. The site is a companion piece to the Instagram account @niagararivertour - a combination of my own personal exploration of the Niagara River, hydro energy, and my personal interest of birding, and educational tool to provide tourists and locals alike with a way to visit different places of interests along the Niagara River Corridor and interact with what they experience. The other companion piece to this project is the Niagara River Corridor Guide to Hydroelectric Energy and Birding Sites.
About this Project
Inspired by Heymitch Stevens' Master's project for Stanford's Learning, Design and Technology (LDT) Masters Program, the Instagram @theinterestingproject I wanted to use Instagram in a novel way to create an educational experience. The Instagram houses short, engaging texts and digital media that offers tourists and locals an opportunity to learn about the history and importance of hydroelectric power in Ontario, explore hydroelectricity production as a renewable resource, and to consider and relate personally to these energy sources and their impact on the surrounding natural environment. I choose Instagram as a content sharing vehicle because it is highly visual and lends itself to sharing various micro-bites of information and narratives through text-based, image-based, and video-based media. The Instagram provides participatory opportunities for others to create and share their own information, exploration, and reflection of topics through participation through commenting, sharing in stories, and creating their own media.
Project Creation Tools
The digital artifacts composing this project have been created using a variety of tech tools:
The Instagram account @niagararivertour
Canva to create 1080x1080 squares
Adobe Photoshop to create the layout for the Instagram feed - a puzzle grid of 12 squares - I watched this YouTube Tutorial to help me!
Canva to create icons for the highlighted stories
Instagram posts, stories, and highlighted stories
Linktr.ee to create the link in bio system for the account - https://linktr.ee/niagararivertour
The podcast:
MacBook Air
Blue Yeti microphone
native Mac app Voicememos
native Mac app Garageband
Bensound for royalty free music
Soundcloud for podcast hosting
Canva to create podcast icon
Google Sites to create this Google Site!