My questions is: How does the use of digital media affect student engagement in reading and writing poetry.
My plan is to have my students complete a survey of their feelings about poetry. I already have their initial responses to "Nothing Gold Can Stay" from our first few days together. I'll be using this as a baseline. As we work through this year together we will incorporate digital media in to our study of poetry. I envision some projects involving Garage Band and/or iMovie. We traditionally create poetry bags (a different take on a project done in the Naples area) for the Winter Concert put on buy the high school for senior citizens. A few years ago we created a disc of students reading their poems to add to the bags. While this was a nice idea, it turned out to be kind of a rush job. I'd like to give this another go, giving the students more responsibility for the mixing, etc. We have a school web site which could be a venue for students to share their work. We also have a morning broadcast where students can show case their work.
What I need is some help with Garage Band and iMovie. I've used both of these programs, but I use them so infrequently, I am always relearning them. I also need some ideas about websites where students can get free access to music and pictures. I'm open to other suggestions about digital media and poetry.
gina,
ReplyDeleteYour post reminded me of something I used to do similar to slam poetry and thought I'd mention it to you in case you were interested. It might be another way to incorporate digital media or add to your morning broadcast. I know there are lots of examples on youtube of students performing slam poetry.It's very engaging to watch and offers another outlet for students and their writing. Just a thought....
Glad to know about the GarageBand and iMovie requests - we can provide help on both in October. Interesting your decision to look at engagement of students while also making a decision to transfer more responsibility to students for the final product. I'm wondering if the two go together (and suspecting that might be the case)?
ReplyDeleteHave you seen the Levi commercials that I think uses Walt Whitman poetry as the basis?
A tiny bit racy for classroom viewing, but it gives some ideas: (and do watch out for the "Suggestions" column in YouTube when this plays)
http://youtu.be/mAXpJSvW5mA
You might think of poetry and multimedia in the same style as digital story - moving images, background music, and a crisp narration