Using ICT to Compose and Create

This chapter takes composition and creation as its theme and focuses on the power of ICT in enabling creativity and innovation. However, here we wish to highlight the way in which ICT can be harnessed to incorrect or enable new material, innovative texts and imaginative creation – rather than re-creations.

Sometimes, ICT is perceived by teachers of English as antipathetic to creativity and imagination, perhaps because of its genesis in binary code and the world of the technology and mathematics.

This chapter will show that far from being the enemy of creativity and flights of fancy, ICT can bring all sorts of new opportunities into play and can be especially useful in helping students who see themselves as less able or less imaginative to re-evaluate themselves.

The chapter will consider ways in which ICT can help

·         In generating ideas

·         Organizing and re-organizing those ideas

·         In experimenting with composition

·         To broaden horizons by opening a the possibilities of non-linear composition

·         To over creative options through the use of mixed media/multimedia.

Generating Ideas

How do you get ideas? Some people are lucky: ideas just seem to swim into their consciousness in shoals. Others stare around at a vast empty ocean. What we do know, as teachers is that generation of ideas and alternative aided by variety of stimuli and the opportunity to play.

Sound and image

At the most basic level, teachers have found that using a projector to display interesting, arresting or sometimes simply random image is a helpful starting point.

One of the simplest ways to do this is to display pictures from a selected folder on the computer connected to the projector. From control panel select screen saver and choose my pictures slideshow from the drop down menu. You can browse to a specific folder into which you have place appropriate images. You can also choose how long to display its image and how long the computer needs to be idle before the display begins.

Most on file players will display abstract pictures while music or other sounds are played. Such image might not be useful when trying to help the generation of ideas but may come in handy at other times.

Some use music in the same way. Type “random music” into a search engine and see what comes up.

Ideas from words

Random words

For most teachers of English ideas are generated by words is there any point in this playing random words? Possibly, depending on the context of your lesson or if you just wish to incorrect, encourage play, which as we known is one of the ways in which we experiment, explore - and learn.

Random word plus allows the user to select from noun, adjective, adverb, verb (transitive or intransitive), interjection, or preposition. It also allows a choice from “very common” through to “obscure” if you choose obscure interjection, be prepared for “willikers!” while common nouns will provide a more familiar fare.

Of the other options, I have found the random sentence generator the most likely evoke responses, whether “how can a fume save the oriental owner!”. Or a host of others. Random paragraph generator could also be of interest. With these kinds of results you always need to try them and see what use they might have.

The random word generator at fourteenminutes.com interpret “random in a different way, creating new words for you (http://bit.ly/te_14). You have the option of suggesting the initial letter or letters. For example; if you are looking for random words begining with “bl” you might get:

Blact                                        blisel                            blunctried

Bloomy                                   blanc                            blamanther

Blams                                      bloccultings                 blacher

Blacknichles                            blumsive                      blassabite

Blesthamentionalless               blanly

Blably                                      bluringly

Possibilities for jabberwocky-related creation immediately spring to mind, as do activities where students are invite to come up with definition for this words.

Words in context

Many teachers will be familiar with “word clouds” where a group of words is displayed, generated from a specific context such as a poem. Wordle is perhaps the best known of this and can be found at www.wordle.net. The instructions are simple and the result attractive:

There are a view variations which mainly affect the appearance of the word cloud. It is possible, however, to fine tune the process so that common words are omitted, as in the given example

                                      

Organizing ideas

In adapting random lines of poetry, we have begun to move on from ideas generation to the organization of ideas. This is a fruitful area too – though

There is a lot to be said for the spidergrams and similar proven aids on paper or flipchart, or whatever comes to hand. Many teachers make use of the interactive whiteboard software which allows them to capture quickly written spidergrams, list or random bullet points: a useful facility and saving on flipchart paper. What can ICT offer in the area organizing / structuring ideas?

·         Interactive whiteboard software to capture handwritten suggestions

·         Word processor to re-arrange items into different groups/alter priorities

·         Powerpoint slides which can be re-arranged like index cards.

·         Programs which are designed to facilitate ‘visual thinking” and the organization of ideas

Word Processors

A word processors is a highly flexible tool for the management of ideas once they are turned into words. While they do not allows words to float anywhere on the screen, word processors do offer a simple way to organize a range of items into an order. They also provide straightforward ways of signifying importance subsidiarity.

The first stage is to separate the pros from the cons. We might use a highlighter

(red and green would be appropriate) or any other texy6t format tool. Having done that, we could drag and drop the items so that they from two distinct banks. A useful shortcut is shift + Alt and the up/down cursor (arrow) keys. Just position the mouse caret in the line you wish to move and use that combination of keys.

This kind activity is crucial for students to be able to develop into competent writers and needs modeling again in as many different ways as possible.

Power point

Power point is seen ( and often criticized ) as merely a way making lecture notes visible and encouraging irritating special effects. It is true that it can be used badly – booth by students and by those who should know better. However, that should not prevent us from appreciating some of its very useful functions. One of these is the way in which in can help us to crytallize our thoughts and then to arrange them. Slides should only ever contain a summary of what is to be said.

Once ideas,thoughts,points for and against have been jotted down onto slides, the slide sorter view can be used to decided the order in which they should be arranged. This is the case whether there is to be a spoken or a written out come : the slide sorter is equally useful for both situations and is a facility with which  students many not be familiar.

Mind-Mapping Application

There are a number of commercially available software packages which will enable students to carry out what have come to be called “Mind-Mapping” activities. Its probably as good a term as any .Bubbl.us (www.bubbl.us).

Should we wish to develop one strand of the argument in particular , or change our mind completely about something, it’s easily and immediately possible to alter it. Its worth creating an account, though, so that you can save your work.

Other mind-mapping applications work in similar ways and, as you would expect, those which have to be downloaded and or paid for tend to offer more facilities but also to be more complex.

Non-linear composition

A non-linear text can be read in more than order, usually at the reader’s discretion. It is possible, but difficult, to construct these using traditional means the choose your own adventure books which were popular in the 1980s and still have  a readership are probably the best example of non-linier texts in printed form.

Create a story based on familiar tale such as ‘jack and the beanstalk’. Just concentrate on a small part of the story. The plan might look like this.

This plan is straight forward in that there are no multiple links. It might , for example , be useful to insert a link from a particular poem back ‘Conditions in the trenches’ or from a poem by Sassoon to one by owen: that, after all  is the point  of having a hyperlinked text. Anything of value created in this way becomes a resource for the future , of course.

Mixing Your Media

Much has been made in the world of ICT of the term multimodality, often to impress others. It means a combination of modes of communication, for example, combining graphics

The concept is not new. We have been combining words and pictures for as long as we can remember .what is new? Three important aspects :

·                     The ability to include sound and moving images

·                     The ease with which all of these things can be accomplished , even by very  young users

·                     The ease with which the component and their relationships to each other can be changed

We are already familiar with the ways in which power point and other presentational software can combine words and graphics in a way which is more dynamic than the mere insertion of graphics into a text document.

Multimodal possibilities

Film is the most abvious example which comes to mind when considering multimodality, as it can embrace sound and moving images, together with text and music.

Video (and related media) can be employed to create, for example :

·                     A group interpretation of a poem

·                     A presentation of an episode from a novel

·                     A scene from a play

Moving words and moving images

A class of 14-15 year-old students, studying poetry, used windows movie marker to in interpret poems from the other cultures section of an exam anthology. Rather than  work on a whole poem, the teacher wanted  them to focus on language in a more concentrated way and suggested that they select a few key lines and use images to bring out the meaning.

The application was not hard to use for students familiar with other windows software, they could also refer to a guide created by CLEO, the original broadband consortium cumbria and Lancashire education online (http;//bit.ly /te_16)

The Reporter Report

A Secondary comprehensive school was looking for a way to raise standards in literacy, to engage and motivate boys and to educate students and staff in the use of ‘New Media’. They employed a film-maker with experience of working in educational environments who worked with students aged 121-13 create short (2-4 minute) films on topics of their own( moderated) choice.

Pros and Cons

The advantages student engagement was high .even who were initially shy of appearing in front of a camera eventually wanted to participate. Literacy skills improved in the areas of focused research, writing to I from (especially non-chronological report writing) and confidence and clarity in speaking.

Animation

Animation is a form of film-making which seems to engage students of all ages. If you have a digital camera and the right software, you can make an animated film. There are a number of pupil –friendly programs available and for the purpose of the English classroom .those designed for primary use will be more than adequate.