Volume 6 Number 3 2009 www.wwwords.co.uk/ELEA
New Media, New Literacies
and the Adolescent Learner
JANETTE HUGHES
Faculty of Education,
University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada
ABSTRACT The goal of this research study was to develop a conceptualization of the relationship between new digital media and adolescent students’ writing of poetry while immersed in using new media. More specifically, the research focused on the performative affordances of new media and how these interacted with the students’ creative processes as they created digital poems. The article examines eight themes that emerged during the study, including the multimodal, multilinear and collaborative nature of the poems, the role of audience and identity in the creative process, and the shifting views of poetry the students experienced.
It would be an understatement to say that adolescence is a period of complex human development. Adolescents face a number of challenges during these years of rapid personal change marked by physical, emotional, social, moral and cognitive development. The challenge for English language arts educators is to ensure that adolescents have avenues to explore their identities and to express themselves in purposeful ways in safe, non-threatening environments: places free of judgment where they can explore issues of relevance to themselves. They also require acknowledgement and incorporation of their social worlds in the classroom, and these social worlds include digital spaces such as Facebook, MSN, MySpace, YouTube and various other Web 2.0 technologies.
Within a multiliteracies framework there is an emphasis on students as producers or ‘Designers’ rather than just consumers of text (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000). Youth are naturally concerned with emerging identities, and they are trying to find ways to express themselves. Through poetry writing, adolescents can give voice to those things that concern them most. We need to provide them with opportunities to think about who they are and what they want to represent to the world through not only what they say but also how they say it.
The objective of this research [1] is to develop a conceptualization of the relationship between new media and adolescent students’ writing of poetry while immersed in using new media. More specifically, the research focuses on the following questions: 1. How do the performative affordances of new media interact with the students’ creative processes? 2. How do students use and possibly re-purpose the digital tools at their disposal? 3. How are students’ views of poetry reshaped in the process of writing poetry in a media-rich environment?
Context
Why Poetry?
This research project is born out of my interest in and experiences with technology in the English language arts classroom as well as my love of poetry and my curiosity and concern about the fate of poetry in a digital age. Although poetry is part of the language arts curriculum, my impression is that it is not addressed by some teachers, addressed superficially by others, and addressed explicitly and in a sophisticated manner by only a few. Much has been written about the problems associated with teaching poetry (Andrews, 1991; Benton, 1999, 2000; Pike, 2000). More than genres such as novels or plays, poetry seems to elicit the most ‘groans’ from students. Often English teachers report feeling less comfortable teaching poetry either because they aren’t sure how to teach it effectively, or because they find it elusive themselves (Lockward, 1994). Benton’s 1998 survey of 100 secondary English teachers in the United Kingdom indicates that lack of time due to systemic constraints (e.g. National Curriculum and standardized tests) plays a large role in determining whether poetry gets adequate coverage in the classroom. Benton reports that the teachers’ ‘most pressing concern was that time which they had formerly given to poetry was now pre-empted by other aspects of the English curriculum: the [phrase] used very often was that poetry gets “squeezed out”’ (p. 86). As an Ontario classroom teacher for 14 years, I share this concern given our current packed curriculum, and an over-emphasis on accountability which is manifested through Education Quality and Accountability Office testing. As Benton’s survey suggests, a ‘conveyor-belt approach’ to teaching poetry – an emphasis on critical analysis in a limited time frame – results in loss of spontaneity, little time to read poetry for pleasure and little room for personal response (p. 87).
It is its conciseness, its brevity, its ability to convey so much in such a limited space that is the poem’s appeal. Contemporary Canadian poet Molly Peacock (http://www.mollypeacock.org) (1999) calls poetry the ‘screen-size’ art – an art that ‘offers depth in a moment, using the depth of a moment’ and she argues that a poem fits on a mental screen, allowing a thought to ‘pierce our busyness’ (p. 13, original emphasis). Peacock describes poetry as the ‘fusion of three arts: music, storytelling, and painting’ where the line represents the poem’s music, the sentence explains the story and the image displays the ‘vision’ of the poet (p. 19). Poetry barrages the reader with images, in rapid-fire succession, in a short space of time. Although all text is multimodal to some degree, poetry is arguably more multimodal than other genres. Although there are those who have always used rich and innovative ways to read and teach poetry, the traditional mode for teaching poetry has been through print text, with a focus on finding one meaning to be dissected or a content to be apprehended (Andrews, 1991; Benton, 1999, 2000; Peacock, 1999; Pike, 2000; Nichols, 2002).
Why Digital Media?
The potential role of new media in the English language arts classroom is only beginning to be explored and although scholarly discussion surrounding this new field is growing, there is much work to be done if we are to understand how emerging technologies are changing literacy practices. The argument for a pedagogy that takes into account, not only traditional print and oral literacies, but also visual and multimodal representations, has been well established in the literature (Luke, 1996; New London Group, 1996; Lankshear & Knobel, 1998; Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kress, 2000, 2003; Hammett & Barrell, 2002; Knobel & Lankshear, 2006). However, we know from studies in the areas of multiple literacies, New Literacy studies, multimodal literacies, and digital literacies that students bring with them very sophisticated sets of skills that remain untapped in the classroom setting (Short et al, 2000; Alvermann, 2002; Mackey, 2002; McClay & Weeks, 2002; Alvermann & Xu, 2003; Dyson, 2003; Gee, 2003; Kress, 2003; Millard, 2003; Cook, 2005; Pahl & Rowsell, 2005).
language use. Students will understand language use within an electronic medium. As Pahl & Rowsell (2005) point out: ‘Language is not, and clearly will not be, printed texts with incidental images, but instead texts of all kinds with colour, different fonts, on monitors or mobile phones with sound, gesture and movement’ (p. 4). In digital environments words are no longer static, black squiggles on a white page. They can change size and colour, they can rotate, jump, twirl and fly in, and they can fade and intensify. Different modalities – aural, visual, gestural, spatial and linguistic – come together in one environment in ways that reshape the relationship between printed word and image or printed word and sound (Jewitt, 2006). This change in the materiality of text inevitably changes the way we read or receive the text and has important implications for the way we construct or write our own texts.
New Media as Performance Media
Considering poetry in the context of new media, I am drawn to attend to the role of performance in poetry and, more specifically, to digital performance. Digital communication has an immersive and performative potential. The online world, which only a few years ago was mostly text based, is now a performative medium. The tools used to develop the interactive content typically found on the Web, such as sleek advertisements and interactive educational content, are programming environments such as Flash and Director. Note the language used by the programmers: in these environments you program on what is called a stage, where the objects you create are referred to as actors, and where actors participate in scenes, interacting with other actors based on their programmed behaviours that are written in scripts.
The point I am making is that new media, unlike the printed page, are (much more so) performance media. Writing poetry in new media blurs the boundary between a poem and its performance and reminds us of poetry’s oral origins. It is difficult to distinguish between what is typically considered to be poetry (the printed poem) and what is a poetry performance, as the reading, the music, the images, and perhaps even the stories (on digital video) can be integral components of the digitally authored poem. It is clear that the whole package is important – the poem on the page, the poem in the air as it is spoken aloud, and the poem as it is presented or performed. New media lift the poem from the print-bound page, offering the opportunity to integrate all aspects of poetry presentation and make them accessible in a public and non-linear way. However, the shift from a print culture to a culture suffused with new media has not yet been realized in the classroom, particularly in the area of poetry study.
Before immersing myself in using and researching new media, I would have considered a poem and its performance to be two distinct, separate artefacts. A poet writes a poem – that is poetry. A poet reads a poem – that is performance. I would have seen the poem ending at the edge of the page and the performance starting on the stage. However, as my research progressed I realized that this perception – this separation of poetry and performance – is rooted in a view of poetry as a printed artefact. Imagine how a poem might be written differently if the poet uses new media during the creation process. Would it be simply a set of stanzas on the screen, mimicking the printed form? Or might it be read aloud, with only some of the words printed on the screen? Images might be incorporated to express the feelings that the poet wants to convey or perhaps some form of music might be added at appropriate places in the reading of the poem, or video clips of the poet telling a story related to the poem, or the inclusion of different versions of the poem, perhaps earlier drafts or simply alternate versions. The question then becomes, ‘Where does the poem end, and where does its performance begin?’
Why Performance?
student poetry that range from journals or magazines such as What if?,a print collection of quality fiction, poetry and editorials written by and for young Canadians, and online poetry ezines, such as Re:Verse, which is sponsored by the League of Canadian Poets (http://www.poets.ca). Online poetry forums such as youngpoets.ca (http://www.youngpoets.ca/) encourage students to post their work and receive feedback and writing advice from moderators or online mentors and, finally, consider the burgeoning number of teen blogs, as many adolescents engage in what Lankshear & Knobel (2003) call ‘self-broadcasting.’
Each new performance of a poem represents the individual’s interpretation and response. Having been engaged with the text, the reader/performer offers a synthesis forged from his or her experiences with the poem’s ‘sound and rhythm and image and idea’ (Rosenblatt, 1976, p. 278). The notion of performance supports Rosenblatt’s metaphor of a silent reader who ‘performs the poem or the novel, as the violinist performs the sonata. But the instrument on which the reader plays, and from which he evokes the work, is – himself’ (p. 279). However, as Athanases (2005) points out, the kind of performance referred to here is more than just metaphorically ‘performing’ through silent reading. Rather ‘students turn a poem text into a notated script that guides an actual performance of particular embodied feelings and meanings’ (p. 89).
Such an approach views performance as a vehicle for exploration and learning, rather than as a fixed product to be rehearsed and delivered as a final event. Students do indeed rehearse, but the rehearsal process is accompanied by reflection and is an integral part of the learning experience. As Athanases (2005) points out: ‘This model differs from those that treat performance as a fun, add-on activity by viewing performance as a creative but deliberate process interwoven with other literacy events’ (p. 89). This approach also recognizes the fluid and temporal nature of response and interpretation as with every performance our interpretations and responses evolve.
The Project
Methodology
To develop a conceptualization of the relationship between new media and students’ writing of poetry while immersed in using new media, in-depth, qualitative data were collected using the process outlined below. Because I seek an in-depth understanding of how students use new media in the meaning-making process, my focus is on the particular rather than on the general, seeking to capture the nuances, the situational contexts, and the passion of those participating.
Luke (2003) calls for researchers to ‘craft new hybrid methodologies and theories that, in effect, must play catch-up with the unprecedented textual and social practices that students are already engaging in, often on the sly’ (p. 402). I’ve chosen to blend grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2000) with my developing notion of research as performance (Hughes, 2008). I employ techniques of induction and deduction to develop a theory around how students use new media to write their own poetry.
Data, in the form of video, photos and other material artefacts from classroom sessions, as well as semi-structured interviews with the teacher and selected students, field journals and open-ended survey responses, were collected from two grade 11 (ages 15-16) academic English classes of approximately 28 students each, taught by the same teacher. I conducted a content analysis of the transcribed interviews, videotaped classroom interactions, and the digital artefacts created by the students in order to identify themes informing a conceptualization of how authoring poetry with new media might change the way students construct texts and how the shift in process reorganized or restructured their thinking about poetry. Every attempt was made to share and discuss the data analysis with the participants in the study, to check its integrity and to add to its robustness based on their feedback.
Procedure
in conjunction with the classroom teacher, the poetry project that focuses on these expectations was designed and implemented, with a particular emphasis on performance. Students explored the role of performance in the reading and writing of poetry and they performed their own poetry in a variety of ways, including digital performance. As a class, we viewed several sample digital poems and we discussed the students’ responses to them focusing on both form and content. We examined the various modes of expression, looking at the visual images, the written text, the narration (voice) and the musical soundtracks that played in the background, and considered how these different modes converged and spoke to each other. Students were given a choice of what software they used for this digital performance. For example, they could use PhotoStory3, iPhoto, PowerPoint or Corel Presentations, iMovie or even Flash, if they had learned that software in another course. These software programs are either free downloads or licensed by the Ontario Ministry of Education for use by students and teachers. Other than showing the students what was possible with the technology, we did not direct them to write the print version of the poem first, nor did we suggest they work from images to text in the creation of the poem. We wanted to see what would happen if they had all options open to them from the beginning of the project.
Findings
After examining the more than 50 digital poems created by these adolescents, their pre-project and post-project surveys about their feelings about poetry and their responses to the digital poetry project, my field notes and transcripts of interviews with selected students, I have identified eight themes in my analysis of the data in the first year of this 3-year project.
Multimodal expression. It is not surprising that the digital poems created by these adolescents are multimodal given the materiality of the computer and the software at their disposal. The students combined a variety of modes of expression, including images (both still photos and video), oral readings, musical soundtracks (original and commercially produced), and text that is haptic, with attention paid not only to language but how the text ‘behaves’ on screen with its changing fonts, colours, sizes and the way it enters and exits the performance. This multimedia ensemble combined modalities that added layers of meaning that might not be conveyed in a strictly print format.
Although most of the students were already familiar with creating a variety of multimedia texts and many had used the software for other purposes, none of them had ever attempted to author a digital poem. For some students, the convergence of text, sound and image came more naturally than for others; however, as noted above, we showed the classes examples (http://faculty.uoit.ca/hughes/clip3.html) of digital poems and examined how the various components interacted to create meaning.[2] We discussed the use of literal versus more abstract images to try to stretch the students’ imaginations and to get them thinking metaphorically. We drew attention to the way different fonts were used, and how using different colours and sizes might complement or disrupt the meaning of the actual words. We also examined how transitions and other special effects (use of watercolour or sepia features, for example) were used to either enhance or detract from the poem. This analysis and discussion during the viewing of sample digital poems helped students consider how they would use image, sound and text in the creation of their own poems. Students used a wide array of special features and experimented with the many different ways of combining text, sound and image in their own digital poems, which is evident in the examples included later in this article.
The focus on multimodal expression in this project also prompted the students to reconsider their ideas about literacy and their own literate practices. At the outset of the project the students had a very conventional notion of literacy defined as the reading and writing of print text. Although they were using a wide variety of new technologies that required various literacy skills outside of school, they did not identify these as literacy practices. At the end of the project, their views of literacy had expanded to include multimodal/digital forms of expression.
suggest, other forms of writing as well) in a digital environment requires a different kind of authorship and offers insights into how context shapes meaning. The authoring process the students engaged in was multilinear and varied from student to student. Some students wrote the text of their poems first and then digitized it (see Figure 1); some worked with images first and then wrote the text from the images; many moved back and forth between the media. In comparison, in my work with teacher candidates writing digital poems, I have observed that most write the text first and then add images, sound and special effects. Of course, our teacher candidates are adults who did not grow up immersed in the digital world of these adolescents.
Figure 1. From page to screen.
It is also interesting to note that for many of the students, their adolescents-with-media identity exists in the home, rather than at school. A primary reason seemed to be that they found it inconvenient to have to transfer the poem back and forth from school to home on a memory stick. Some of the students who attempted to do this encountered compatibility problems between the versions of the software that they had at home, and the version that existed at school. Students were, however, given adequate time to complete the digital poem entirely at school, so taking it home was not necessary, yet many of them chose to do so. We have to ask ourselves why so many chose to work from home. Consider the typical environments for computers in schools – in labs where computers are lined up back to back in long lines (see Figure 2).
There is a sense of mass production and institutionalization. I wonder how many of us, as scholars, would be able to do our best writing in a lab at the university. At home, many students have their own spaces where they can work comfortably with technology. When asked why they chose to work at home, students reported that it was ‘easier’ to work on the digital poem at home where they had access to all of their pictures and other materials, and that they were ‘more familiar’ with their own technology.
Personalized technology.Connected to this idea that students found it easier to work with their own technology, rather than use the school’s facilities, is the notion that the technology they were using was personalized. It is interesting to note that most of the digital tools the students used were not production tools; they were generic and they were not designed with the purpose of creating digital poetry. The tools are at once more complex (compared to paper and pencil), and the work environments, more personalized (the types and versions of software we use, for example). It could also be argued that once we immerse ourselves in something, it becomes personal – and using a different computer is difficult. As an instructor in a preservice teacher education program that is laptop based, I witness this kind of personalization all the time. Many of my students name and decorate their laptops and imbue them with personality. The adolescents involved in this project were similarly attached to their media. One frustrated student humanized her computers and complained that her ‘computers don’t seem to like each other, and would not cooperate.’
The students used technologies that were also accessories and accoutrements. We saw every colour of iPod imaginable and the students changed the skins on their iPods and cell phones to match the outfit of the day. They used their iPods and MP3 players to save and transfer their digital poems from computer to computer. Some students used their cell phones to take pictures for their digital poems, even though several high-quality digital cameras were available for them to use in class and to sign out to use outside of school. Several of the students had their own laptops, or brought in laptops belonging to a family member. It was not uncommon to see students using all of these technologies simultaneously. The two girls in this picture, for example, are working on a laptop, while using an iPod and looking at pictures they have stored on a digital camera (see Figure 3). And the tools were not all technological; for example, some of the students used their own musical instruments to record a soundtrack for the poem and, in one poem, a student used his guitar as the actor in the performance.
Figure 3. Juggling multiple technologies.
Collaborative ethos. Although each student was required to author his/her own digital poem, students frequently shared their poems throughout the creative process and particularly while they were editing. Collaboration has been a component of the writing process for years. It is not uncommon for students to peer edit each other’s work or offer feedback to friends. The creative process itself is often seen as solitary and critics of screens (whether they be computers or hand-held gaming devices) often comment that they isolate students from each other and society; however, we found that students collaborated in a myriad of ways throughout this project (see Figures 4 and 5).
They helped each other take photos and many of them used images of their friends and family in their performances. They helped each other with technical problems and offered each other feedback through each stage of the process. Collaboration was evident in other ways too. For example, three boys worked together to perform their poems as songs. They each wrote their own text (lyrics), but they worked together to perform the song and edit the video footage. One student even collaborated with her mother to write a song to accompany her poem.
Figure 4. Collaborating on writing. Figure 5. Peer sharing and revising.
Audience focused. One of the things the majority of the students said they liked about the project was that they felt they were writing for an audience (see Figure 6). We discussed the idea of screening the poems when they were finished, but also the idea that we might ‘publish’ them on a class website or, for those who wanted, on YouTube. Several of the students talked about emailing the digital poems to family and friends; some talked about putting them on their websites and blogs.
Many shared their poems with their immediate families and came back to school talking about how their mother or father had cried because they were moved by the poem (http://faculty.uoit.ca/hughes/clip5.html). A student who wrote about parent/child relationships used family photographs. During the screening of the poem in class, several of the students responded with tears because it was so touching. In the feedback session the student shared that she had shown the poem to her family, who were also emotionally moved, and that her mother had asked for a copy to keep and to send to other members of the family. This was an assignment that brought the family together and helped them celebrate their relationships – a response that is seldom generated by school work, or inspired by poetry authored in print text. The students seemed to be responding to the performative potential of new media by authoring performance poetry.
Performance oriented. Writing poetry with new media, with all of its affordances, shifts the writing of poetry to a performance-oriented craft. Students were given a choice whether or not to use their own voices to narrate or read the poem. The majority of the students chose to use a musical soundtrack (either commercial or original) and text on screen despite the fact that we discussed copyright. Of course, copyright issues for music and images raise ethical concerns, but the explosion of new media on the Read/Write Web (a place where collective intelligence and collaboration is at the forefront) also calls into question notions of ownership and authorship. This is a discussion that lies beyond the scope of this particular article and further investigation needs to be undertaken into how students are using new media in the cut-and-paste culture they live in. When I asked those students who didn’t choose to use their literal voice why they had made this decision, most of them responded that they didn’t like the sound of their own voice, they didn’t feel confident enough, or that they wanted the music and its lyrics to convey a parallel message for them.
The performances (http://faculty.uoit.ca/hughes/clip8.html) were also embodied. Whether the images were still shots or video clips, many of the students captured their own facial expressions, gestures, and poses, as is evident in Figures 7 and 8. Four of the poems were musical performances, with lyrics, music and video created by the students.
Figure 7. A performance on stage. Figure 8. A musical performance.
Identity focused. The digital poems were identity focused, which is not surprising given adolescents’ focus on exploration of self and their roles in the world. Some students wrote about the importance of music, dance, video-gaming, anime, and sports in their lives. They wrote about personal concerns – the pressure on the dancer to stay thin; the loss of a friend to drunk-driving; steroid use; the pressures of school and homework.
change. After barraging the reader with images of poverty from the media, one student includes a whole series of images of her friends holding up signs promoting an end to poverty.
Students not only connected their writing to themselves, they also performed in their worlds – they used clips from YouTube and DVDs, and drew on their knowledge of and passion for music videos, anime and video games. One student wrote a poem (http://faculty.uoit.ca/hughes/clip10.html) about the life of a soldier in which he juxtaposes images from several online war games with real images of soldiers, past and present. He doesn’t glorify war (as most war video games do), but talks about the control the State has over a soldier’s life – an interesting parallel to the control the gamer has over his characters in the virtual world.
A few students wrote in-role to tell the story of a sibling, a friend, or themselves at another time in their lives. One student wrote from the perspective of a 12-year-old girl contemplating suicide (http://faculty.uoit.ca/hughes/clip6.html). They engaged in telling the reader something about themselves and the people they care about.
Shifting views of poetry. At the outset of the project, we surveyed the students to see what views they held of poetry and what their schooled and out-of-school experiences were with poetry. Approximately half of the students said they either liked poetry or ‘didn’t mind it,’ but a common response from those who responded that they didn’t like poetry was that it was ‘boring,’ ‘difficult to understand’ or ‘a waste of time’ since they would not ‘need it’ after high school. Ninety percent of all of the students surveyed claimed that their schooled experiences with poetry were ‘boring’ and focused on mastering ‘forms and styles.’ Only 10% of the students responded that they read or write poetry outside of school; these poems were not shared with others. Several of these students stated that they wrote for themselves, to express their feelings and to work through their emotions. Students were surveyed, and selectively interviewed, at the end of the project. More than half of the students who initially said they didn’t like poetry reported that they enjoyed writing a digital poem. They said it was ‘more exciting’ and the idea of play was mentioned several times. One student said she ‘enjoyed playing with the text and images’ to see how they might ‘complement each other.’ One student felt that this project helped ‘level the playing field a bit,’ stating that ‘it gives you a chance to be more creative if you aren’t good with poetry but you’re good with computers, it gives you a chance to do good.’ Students who struggled with traditional forms of writing were motivated and engaged and produced poems of a higher quality than they had previously.
One of the things that came up over and over in the surveys (when asked about the difference between composing poetry in a traditional print context and using new media) was that students felt writing poetry through these media required them to think more carefully or deeply about the written images they used and to pay more attention to the language of the poem. The majority of them mentioned that it was ‘another way’ of writing a poem that enabled them to capture an experience and add meaning to it. One student said creating the digital poem encouraged her to ‘take it from a flat medium to a multimedia, full experience’ and ‘forced [her] to examine it more closely’ to determine whether the images, sound and text ‘worked together.’
From their responses it was clear that creating a poem with new media does not diminish print text – the process was still about creating a good poem. A few students found it more challenging to create a digital poem than a conventional print poem because it was difficult to find the ‘right’ image to convey what they wanted. Perhaps the question is, not whether to use images, but ‘what images’? It is not a simple task to join visual images with words. The creator must possess an expanded set of skills, which includes visual artistry. It is certainly a more complex task to find or create images that move beyond the literal. Part of our role as English language arts educators is to help students develop visual literacy. By questioning what images to use and thinking deeply about that, it also requires them to think deeply about the words they use.
Future Directions
at the secondary school level, we will repeat the process we followed in the first phase of this project; however, we will also offer students opportunities to use other affordances of Web 2.0 environments. They will be able to use hypertext to add multilinearity to their poems. The poems these students created were unilinear in their presentation; they had a beginning, a middle and an end, and we had to view them in the sequence chosen by the poet. I’m interested in exploring how a hypertext environment changes this. Imagine a poem with some of the words or phrases linked to images, videos or simply text annotations or, imagine smudges beside the poem, things that seem to have been erased by the author, which when clicked lead to an earlier or a different version of that line, or notes by the author to explain their thinking, or to add context. Imagine a poem whose components (like text, video, audio, image, or combinations of these) exist as distinct elements on a webpage that can be viewed in any order. To accomplish this, students will use a wiki, which facilitates collaborative authorship. In a wiki, students can edit the work of others and the wiki maintains a history of all changes made. Imagine a draft writing process when adolescents contribute ideas to one another’s poems by ‘writing’ on the same page as the author. They can also highlight words or phrases and create links to new pages, where they add comments and suggestions. I will be interested in seeing how adolescents use these affordances to engage in the poetry-writing process.
Looking Ahead
Researchers are only beginning to understand how multimodal, interactive media successfully attract, capture, and hold the attention of students (Jonassen, 2000; Gee, 2003; de Castell & Jenson, 2004). Certainly using new media in the reading, writing and representing of poetry motivates students if only because it offers a new and fresh classroom approach. However, the use of new media adds elements to the study of poetry that go beyond motivation.
The performative potential of new media encourages students to explore poetry with new forms of linguistic and visual play, and perhaps helps to move students beyond observing and analyzing poetry, toward encouraging a dialogue with a poem. It allows students to get inside the poem, to be co-creator, to play with the language of the poem and to offer their own responses and interpretations. Poetic language disrupts the familiar and causes us to pay attention not only to what is being said, but the way it is being said as well. Using new media in the reading, writing and representing of poetry also causes us to pay attention because the poem is being presented in an unfamiliar way, where text, image and sound converge in ways that they cannot in conventional print anthologies.
The notion of poetry as performance supports the view that students need to be producers as well as consumers of poetry. Youth are naturally concerned with emerging identities, and they are trying to find ways to express themselves. Through poetry writing, adolescents can give voice to those things that concern them most and I think it is fitting to conclude with the viewing of one student’s poem (http://faculty.uoit.ca/hughes/clip7.html) about the importance of voice. We need to provide students with opportunities to think about who they are and what they want to represent to the world through not only what they say but also how they say it; writing poetry using new media offers a fresh way to engage them in the writing process.
Despite the popularity of the Web for bringing people together in various ways through new communication tools, relatively few teachers seem to be tapping into these new technologies. I am not suggesting that the print form is no longer useful in a digital age, but rather, we have new forms of expression that extend and (re)shape our ability to express ourselves. Immersing students in a digital environment that serves as a model for their own digital performances views performance as a purposeful and creative process interwoven with other literacy events. Such an approach, which fully engages the student multimodally across the language arts – reading, writing, viewing, representing, speaking and listening – realizes the pedagogical ideal that students experience poetry through sustained and active engagement and that they pay attention not only to the meaning of the poem but also to its music and its artistry.
Notes
[1] This research is made possible through a generous grant from The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
[2] A variety of the digital poems created for this project can be viewed by clicking on the links provided. All poems are included with the permission of the students and their parents.
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