Text mapping
English teacher Tony Clfford coined the term “text mapping” for this activity;
just as a map can represent a variety of features in the physical terrain, the
digital text map picks out key features in the passage. As teacher you may want
to model this by using the word processor an a digital projector or a
interactive whiteboard (where the tools will offer similar effects) and even
start your lesson by identifying the features you would like them to explore.
The illustration shows the opening of keats’ poem The Eve of St Agnes.
With colours used to highlight words about the cold, about religion and also
some contrasts (the monochrome screenshot hides the use of five colours in the
original).
Enriching the study of texts
The internet does more than make available a
vast library of text. The riches of some of the world’s great libraries such as
the british library, are also coming online to enrich the study of language and
literature.Precious manuscripts, discarded drafts, mementoes and ephemera that
have been too valuable, fragile or simply too far away can now be accessed by
students to explore the ways authors create their texts.
Poets in their own words
The poetry Archive offers considerable
enrichment; teachers may like to follow the detailed lesson outline for this
poem provided by Sue Dymoke in the extensive section ‘For Teachers; which
suggest (among other approaches) creating a multimedia presentation with images
and sound to match the text.
Exploring the sub-text
The flexibility of
electronic text provides opportunities for students to explore sub-text too.
When considering motivation, for example, students are often invited to suggest
what they imagine the characters might be thinking. A word processor makes this
easier to display and complete.
Consider the short scene
in Macbeth where the King invites Banquo to dinner in the evening. At this
stage of the play, each character is likely to be wary of voicing their true feelings.
A simple way to do this would be to put the text into a table, with space on
either side for what is going through their minds – Machbeth sinisterly on the
left, Banquo righteously on the right, perhaps.
Presentation software
such as powerpoint enables them to take this a step farther, in a technique
we’ve dubbed ‘powerpoint counterpoint’. With the spoken text display on screen,
each character can be given their own thought bubbles. These are sometimes
labelled ‘callouts’ in the software; select contrasting colours for the tought
bubbles for each character.
A cartoon approach to alternative
interpretations
Teaching different
interpretations of a text is difficult. Students often want to be told a
‘right’ answer; it’s perhaps not surprising that some find it difficult to
explore different interpretations when they struggle to discover even one.
Gregory Anderson, a
teacher working in a school in Scarborough, found that storyboarding is an
effective way to support the teaching of this important English skill, of
exploring different interpretations.
While traditional
storyboarding encourages pupils to ensure a clear link between each comic pane,
apt punctuation and spelling and some adherence to the conventions of comic
strips, the potential of ICT allows interactivity and collaboration.
Students are shown how to
choose different expressions or body postures and reflect how these might
indicate different ways of feeling about the event. Individuals or groups can
rapidly creat their own interpretations and then display and discuss them side
by side in class.
Online reading Journal
As teachers, we often want students to capture their initial
reactions, perhaps to reflect their changing experience as they can reflect
later on how their ideas have develop. Reading blogs and journals are often
used for these purpose. Rebecca Darch found that the srudents enjoyed the sense
of empowerment that they achieved from choosing their own activities, and
whether this could be included in her lesson. Rebecca also noticed that because
students soon felt at ease in this informal environment, their work would be a
fairer reflection of their real interst; some able students were soon doing far
more than the stipulated task, creating additional activities. Another very
succesful activity was an online development of hot seating: she selected some
of the more confident students to respond to question in role as characters
from novel, it also encouraged students to develop independent work.
The popularity of podcasts
More public forums can also encourage students to invest
considerable effort. It is often hard to predict what will really engage
recalcitrant students, but teachers have found that the ability ICT offers for
students to publish their work for a real audience, whether inside our outside
the school, can inspire reluctant contributors. Sometimes the motivation is
personal, such a blog about a hobby or sports tea, on other occasions external
assessment may be the spur. In the process of planning and creating podcasts, student
will use a range of strategies, from formal writing for planning, scripts and
note-taking to plenty of unscripted discussion. The final podcasts may be
scripted, improvised or mix of both.
Editing for beginners
Audio and video recording enables us to capture the kind of
ephemera that can so easily be lost in discussion and role play as well as
enabling the production of items to publish in variety of ways. ICT has also
made it much easier to record fleeting events in a variety of other ways. Class
improvisation and role play can be captured with a digital camera and quickly
transferred to a computer for reviewing or reporting group reflections on a
character or situation. Student’s written work can also be recorded. Simply by
using the ability of the word processor to ‘track’ or ‘record’ changes, the
teacher and the writer can see the extent and nature of the editing and
revision process, although this level of detail can be overwhelming and few
students will want to engage in this kind of reflection. An effective use for
this facility is far simple allowing students to review and record their
suggestion on each other’s work. Students are naturally anxious if they think
that someone else in the class is going to after –nay, ruin- their writing.
The ability to record multiple versions can overcome this fear.
Taken on trust
Reflection and evaluation are skills that students need to learn
when reading published works as well as their own writing. Now that the
internet is the first source of information for so many users, it has become
even more important to encourage discrimination when assessing the reliability
of what students read and view. If they have become familiar with the ways in
which in online resources are created. For example by creating their own wiki
pages –they will be able to discuss how far is possible to trust the
reliability and authenticity of entries on site Wikipedia. Beyond that, of
course, there are many sites which promote points of view about politics and
issues such as climate change and animal rights. This may be a fruitful are to
work with colleagues in other subjects, since the ability to detect bias and
test the accuracy of information is important across the curriculum. The
internet, while presenting challenges, also provides an easy way to compare
materials.
In the past, you might have only had access to one or two sets
of encyclopedias in the school library and a few other reference texts.
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