Reflections on creating an iMovie

I love using iMovie. Creating visual poems, stories, or montages is so fun and rewarding. There is such a sense of ownership one gets from getting to use images and music that matters to them in their work. The result is something so personal and so much more than just black letters on plain white paper.

Our world is visual. It is so important that students learn how to navigate the visual world as much as the literary one. It isn't fair to have students simply put words on paper and ignore all the senses. It is with our eyes and our ears that we internalize so much of what goes on around us. And when we can create things with our own hands that we can see and hear, there is a deep sense of personal satisfaction. Working with images and music is like playing, and playing is how we learn about the world.

I did a podcast about Rilke's poem, "Entrance," and decided to continue working with it for this project, as well. I will be teaching a unit on poetry in January and I wanted to explore various ways I might have my students engage with poetry. I want them to analyze the poems of others and write their own poetry. Teaching high schoolers how to write poetry is a very difficult task. If the goal is to get students to learn about and appreciate poetry and be lifelong lovers of poetry, it is important that they feel connected to it. It is not enough to just tell students to write a poem. So many would become paralyzed by confusion or fear. Having students write poems as a response to other poems, or have them write poems based on or inspired by other poems is a good way to start. Before I wrote the words to this poem, I searched for images that reminded me of Rilke's poem. I searched picture databases on Google and Flickr in order to find pictures that I could use. Then, I inserted them into the iMovie. After I had the pictures lined up the way I wanted them, added the music, transitions, and played around with the Ken Burns effects, I began to write my poem based on the pictures I had found. As I wrote, I found I needed to go back and find some other pictures or delete pictures I had already inserted. So, it was just as much about getting the pictures to match the poem as it was getting the poem to match the pictures. I was really surprised by how easily this poem came to me. I was so inspired and motivated by the images and from the ideas I had already gotten from Rilke's poem, that it was almost effortless. And I don't feel like I simply reiterated what Rilke said in his poem. I took an idea that his poem planted in my mind, expanded on it, and let it unfold and develop naturally. In the end, I feel like I have a very orginal poem that no one would know came from Rilke.

I definitely plan on using a form of this activity with my students next quarter. These two forms of technology have provided me with new ways that I am going to inspire my students to analyze existing poems and create their own.

Digital Poem using iMovie

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Reflections on creating a podcast

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this process. In another class, I had an opportunity to create a podcast for an assignment, but I decided not to do it. I thought that creating a podcast was just not a big deal and wouldn't provide any additional understanding than writing a paper would. The process of podcasting as a tool for helping students improve their writing was lost on me. I am happy to announce, though, that I am a convert! This process showed me how much this can help students.

I started my podcast by reading a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, one of my favorite poets. I was just in the mood to read some poetry, so that's what I decided my podcast was going to be about. Just in the process of reading the poem a few times into the microphone brought me new levels of understanding in the poem. Of course, poetry is typically meant to be read out loud, but it's often difficult to ensure that students really did read the poems you assign them a few times aloud. This process of having them record their readings in a podcast is a good way to ensure that they do. This goes for any stories or plays. Students may not even realize how reading out loud is enhancing their understanding, so that part of creating a podcast about a piece of literature is important.

Next, I read a page-long statement/analysis about the poem. This is the part of the process that I really became sold on the podcast idea, especially as a way of enhancing writing skills. I consider myself a fairly good writer and don't often read my work out loud before handing it in. I know I should, but I guess I have convinced myself that I don't need to. However, as I read my work into the mic, I was constantly changing things, realizing that how something sounded in my head was completely different from how it sounded out loud. Again, this is a difficult thing to convince students of, but having them engage with the process of recording podcasts could really help them recognize how to edit their writing.

I realize that podcasting can also be done without a script. I think that that would also be very useful, as a way of having students just talk out their ideas and listen back to them as a way of generating ideas for a paper or a project.

I also included music in my podcast. I wasn't planning on doing that, but I heard a classmate's podcast the other day and he had included music. I felt that the whole thing was more engaging to listen to with soft music in the background and it reveals something about the author. I used Sigur Ros's song "Gong" because it is one of my favorites. Being able to include this element made the whole thing seem more personalized and helped me feel more attached to the project.

Rilke's "Entrance" PODCAST

Meet Molly VLOG

VLOG

Failing Schools VoiceThread

MN Stories Vlog

What I like about this vlog is that, even though it is an interview, they splice it up and incorporate video and music into it. The editing is very sophisticated and interesting and fun to watch. Another reason I like this vlog is that it is a kind of advertisement for something that flies a little under the radar in Minneapolis. Sound Unseen is a really interesting festival that gets little attention outside of the core audience, but since music is something Minneapolis is becoming known for, it's something that a lot of people would be interested in if they only knew about it.

The audience for this vlog is certainly people who are familiar with the festival and want to know what is playing there (well, this is from last year, but that was the intention). It is also for people who are not familiar with what it is and gives them a nice sense of what they might expect. Because the vlog has clips from the films that are playing, you can kind of figure out what the festival and each film that is highlighted is all about.

Sites like Blip.tv are great because they expose people to aspects of the community they might not otherwise have access to.