Written by What we wanted….
Eye catching is the advertisers’ initial game plan, creating eye candy designed to snare your attention. Having published a number of digital pieces over the course of the year we decided that we would hardcopy publish a poem and a narrative piece. Wanting some eye catching spice we turned to add some simple visual language features to the pieces. Expediency being the order of the curriculum drive, the visual spice was required to be effective and efficient. After discussion with team mates we decided to roll with a simple, yet powerful image that would at a glance communicate the subject of the poem. Continuing the trail would be a powerful, yet fitting title that would lead the viewer to delight in well crafted poetic delicacies’.
How we did it…
So simply, we introduced students to creative commons and demonstrated how to search for images, specifically looking for images that the copyright holder allowed modification of. Students could only use one image. To ensure that students found something visually contributive to their poems we discussed the concept of a powerful image. Student discussions concluded in defining powerful images as “images that, with a glance, cause an emotional response”. Students sourced and downloaded images, noting source url.
Wanting to complete this publishing process in mere minutes instead of extended hours, once students had sourced their image the countdown was on. Manipulating their word documents, students were required to simply add the image behind their text, ensure font style and color suited their topic and worked together visually, buddy review, and scale print their document to A3 size. Once printed students then trimmed and slapped their printed poem to black backing paper. Humorously enough, as it turned out, students had the most difficulty feeding A3 paper into the printer and then mastering the paper cutter!
Danno,
This was a great addition to our writing project. Following your lead, I had my students do the same “visual” addition to their “Up-Down” stories to add visual voice – it turned out wonderfully! Ironically, I find students spending almost as much time searching for the perfect image as they do revising their writing. Students are obsessed with finding the “perfect” or “just right” image that engages and/or attracts an audience. Like most things in life, there has to be an initial attraction in order to capture an audience; I found the addition of images as the backdrop to a story scene the perfect potion which continues to draw student/faculty interest as they walk by the writing pieces in the hallway.
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Hey,
Cool idea! Your right that images create a very powerful messages. Depending on how a student looks at an image it might affect on how they write their poems.
It would be interesting to see the diversity of student opinion on one photo and the topics they write about.
In the past I have provided students with images of people from around the world, and asked them to write a poem from the voice of one of the people in the photo. I found that this challenged students to interpret how the people felt in the photo. They did not put the image behind their writing like you suggested. So that would be a great addition to the activity.
I also like how to pointed out using sites like creative commons to ensure kids are siting their source properly, I am quite conscious that I need to explicitly teach students the proper way to site their photos.
I also agree with Jeffery’s that sometimes students might spend too much time finding a perfect image, then not having expressed them seleves well in their writing.