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Inspired by Walt Whitman
BethAnn Olesen, one of my favorite collaborating English teachers, developed a simple project that inspired some outstanding poetic efforts and I thought I’d share.
The prompt was to create a digital poem inspired both by Walt Whitman’s I Hear America Singing and by your own personal interpretation of the American Dream.
BethAnn explains the details:
As part of our study of the evolution of the American dream, our class performed a close reading of Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing.” Students then used Whitman’s work as a model for their own updated version. They used imagery, repetition, and metaphor in their poems to paint a picture of what they perceive to be the modern attitude towards the American dream. After crafting their poems, students used Animoto as a means of exploring how images and music impact a reader’s understanding of mood and tone. Overall, the students created beautiful projects that demonstrated their sophisticated thinking of modern society.
Here are two of our favorite responses:
Anthony’s I Watch America Fight
and Brina’s I See America Running
Filed under: digital storytelling, student work
About Joyce Valenza
Joyce is an Assistant Professor of Teaching at Rutgers University School of Information and Communication, a technology writer, speaker, blogger and learner. Follow her on Twitter: @joycevalenza
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