WASHINGTON, PA (Jan. 13, 2020)—If your idea of reading poetry involves studying dusty, leather-bound volumes in the library, or dramatic readings in smoky clubs reminiscent of the beatnik era, let Dr. Linda Troost’s English students show you something new.
Using Adobe Spark, students in ENG 250 Sound, Image Word: Reading Poetry in a Digital Age created videos and recordings of poems they studied in class with the goal of making poetry accessible to a new and wider audience.
Students recorded themselves reading a poem aloud and then used that as a basis for a video adding images, background music and sound effects. Some of the students chose the same poem by coincidence, and said it was interesting to see how each group interpreted the same piece differently.
Mariana Reyes ’22 said the course taught her how to visualize poems, and gave all of the students the opportunity to share their own perceptions of the poems.
“This helped me look deeper into the poem,” Mariana said. “I had to go step by step and look in between the lines to find what the author wanted to say.”
This project was a part of Washington & Jefferson College’s PrezTech Challenge, which challenges faculty members at W&J to create student projects that showcase innovative uses of educational technology and/or information literacy in the classroom.
Read more PrezTech Challenge Stories:
Transforming Environmental Data Into Music
Recreating the Past: The History of W&J in Photos
