Fracking, by Owen McCann

Fracking Slidecast

2 Responses to "Fracking, by Owen McCann"

Vinay Ghai says:

May 10, 2014 at 3:33 pm

This slidecast was about fracking, and its benefits and drawbacks. This slidecast did a good job relaying the pros and cons of fracking – reduced emissions and contaminated groundwater/earthquakes, respectively. I liked the way that this slidecast integrated topics we had gone over in class: Kranzberg’s First Law and “Progress Towards What”/”Progress For Whom” are very applicable to the topic of fracking. I didn’t previously know that fracking was previously used by dropping dynamite/other explosives down a hole – I thought it was interesting how evident the changes from fracking in the past were compared to the fracking that we have today. At the same time, some insight as to where fracking is headed now, considering that governments are becoming increasingly involved in the matter, might have been interesting as well, but that might have been difficult to squeeze in. Some criticisms I noticed were that the audio was somewhat choppy at times, and there were some longer portions of silence that left me wondering when the audio would start up again. In addition, I noticed the use of the same pictures in repetition, so having some different pictures would have kept the presentation more interesting, in my opinion.

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Eric Martocci says:

May 10, 2014 at 7:29 pm

This slidecast had a particular interest to me. I work in a ductile iron foundry and the huge boom in fracking has had an economic effect on our business. In the presentation you mention the large amounts of water used for fracking but you really did not mention much about the other materials. Beside the water, silica is like gold to the fracking industry and they are willing to pay just about anything to get. This same silica is used in the sand mold casting industry. Supply and demand has raised the price of this silica significantly in the past few years. It has also driven up the price and availability of a railcar. This affects every business in the country that relies on the rail system for shipping and receiving product.
You did a nice job of incorporating Kranzberg’s laws into the presentation. In my situation fracking as progress is two sided. On the energy and pollution side I would say it is progress. On the side that is affecting my livelihood I would say it is not progress. On the down side the audio was somewhat distorted and there were some long periods during some of the slides without any narration. Overall I did enjoy the presentation.

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