Imagine having your students combine images from flickr.com, their own creativity, and a tool like Slide.com to create their own visual poetry? (From the previous link, click on “original view” to enlarge the view and begin the show.)
Flickr has an amazing wealth of photos in the Creative Commons area under the keyword “poetry” to begin with. Or perhaps students could take photographs of words themselves, and make found poems to create their visual poetry.
April is a time to think beyond our own walled gardens. Happy Poetry month!
image credit: jefposkanzer on flickr.com
We did a project just like this last year. A first year teacher came to me and wanted to spice up her poetry unit. The first thing we did was establish what the learning goals were, then set up a progression of steps that would accommodate all learners, and then worked in the tech. The students wrote three poems and chose one to turn into digital poetry. The students chose images to represent the essence of the poem and then recorded the poem. They worked to time the words with the images. We used MovieMaker with the task, others could work just as well.
The first year teacher was very pleased with the results of the project, the students were proud of their work and more students ‘finished’ the work than normal. It was a great way to spice up the poetry unit that hooked more students into the writing and performance of the poetry.
Diane,
Your project sounds like an excellent demonstration of starting with the learning goals first and then seeing how the tools complement that.
I’ve been working on brainstorming some p.r. ideas from a library standpoint on projects/activities or outreach things we could do related to poetry month, and that’s where I got the idea for playing around with flickr images and slide.com.
I’ve also been thinking about holding an event for students to create some “found poems” that we can construct from random paper clippings and then display in the hallways.
I think students have a natural interest in poetry which we sometimes smother with “analyzing it” (I’m a former English teacher so I’m well aware of why we analyze poems, but, I still think we need to provide ways for students to interact with poetry in a way that celebrates the fun of word play and experimentation with language.)
I was thinking about VoiceThread and wikis too–maybe another post, but I recently saw some great examples of ways to use those that would work well with poetry interactions.
Thanks for sharing!
Hi Carolyn,
Thanks for the great poetry writing idea and the theme of April as poetry month. I hope to refer to your idea at http://quoteflections.com/
I have begun Meme: High School Daze to Praise. I would be honoured with a response to my site or on yours on the topic provided.
Best wishes