A Multimodal Experiment

    Here's my completed multimodal example for The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater, and I won't lie... this was HARD. 

    I've grown up on technology. This is something I have repeatedly stated in my other blog posts. I consider myself pretty tech savvy and I tend to make my online work very 'pretty.' But this video - it was the death of me. I used iMovie, since I thought iPhones and other Apple products were generally pretty easy to use... this was not the case. I can't believe how many things I had to look up to make this short and cringey video. While I was extremely annoyed trying to complete my work, I did realize one thing: ALWAYS test out an assignment before giving it to your students. When I was conjuring up this idea, I thought "This would be really easy for my students to complete if I gave some guidance." Again, not true. I'm sure many of my students would run into problems that would only result in coming up with a new approach for the project. Luckily, this was only a 'test run' of sorts, so I don't have to worry (this time).

    Now that I've sort of introduced my video, I can get more into the actual characteristics of it. I chose to write some poetry and then perform it digitally. I didn't particularly enjoy the poem that I uploaded, but it was the shortest one and Blogger wouldn't allow me to place anything with more storage than this one. I wrote a series of other poems, with many of them centering around the different people from The 57 Bus. For example, I had one for Sasha, Richard, the parents of the children, etc. I wanted my students to think about this topic from one of these individual's point of view. In the poem I uploaded for this blog, I focused on Sasha. When reading the book, I noticed a theme for them: attention. Sasha was constantly getting attention, whether they wanted it or not. Because of this pattern, I decided to write a poem about it. For other characters, I followed the same route - find a patter, analyze it, write about it. I found this pretty easy, but I also wanted to include some research. Again, this poem doesn't contain any of the research I did because it was the shortest. On my Richard poem, though, I talked about the unfair mass incarceration rates for the differing races. After research and analyzation, I sat with my eyes closed. I thought about how I may feel being in that person's shoes. Would I feel scared? Alone? Numb? And then I applied this to my poem. From completing these poems. I felt that I had a better understanding of the people involved in the story. I was able to recognize their emotions, but also to feel their stories in a way I hadn't before. This is what I want for my students. 

    Okay, I'm done with the negatives. Now here are the positives: A LOT! I enjoy doing multimodal works online because it's a way of seeing how life is changing. Learning is changing. We are seeing kids adapt in a fast way that has never been seen before. They're doing a great job with the new work given to them. This is great because multimodal works have so much to offer. When I created my digital poem, I decided to do more than just read from my paper. First, I added images. In some poems, not so much this one, the images not only added to the poem, but they were PART of the poem. For example, in my Richard poem, I repeated the words "It was a mistake" alongside the images of a burning fire. The fire is a direct representation of the fire he lit on Sasha's skirt. This wasn't a metaphor, but rather a way to tell their story without explicitly saying anything. It helped to cut out clunky words and sequences that wouldn't fit well in a poem while keeping context from the story. With imagery, I also added audio. Of course, I had a recording of my voice playing, but I laid a quiet song under it, as well. I picked a more gentle and slow song to help set the mood of the poem. I wanted the watcher to feel that the poem had a depressing background, so I found music to match. 

    Overall, after the initial annoyances, I found this assignment to be exciting. I felt I could take my ideas anywhere I wanted them to, and I could express my creativity. This would help students to be more engaged as they have options in many different ways.