I'm teaching creative nonfiction next semester (hurrah!) and some time ago I decided to bring that class into the 21st century by requiring students to produce a multimedia essay. Now I have to figure out what that means and how it will work, and I need help.
Nonfiction writing abounds beyond paper publication--on blogs, in radio essays, in live performance--so I want my students to create essays employing some medium beyond print, but I don't want to put too many restrictions on their creations or teach them all some specific technology that will soon be obsolete. Let them go with what they know: pair their wonderful words with photographs and hyperlinks on a web page, for instance, or produce a radio essay accompanied by appropriate sounds.
The multimedia essay will be due fairly late in the semester, and I wonder whether I ought to allow them to re-purpose an essay written earlier or insist that they write something new. (That will depend partly on how the schedule looks, and I'm not ready to make that call yet.) I also want them to present their multimedia essays to their peers, perhaps in an evening event open to the public. Food will be involved, of course.
I realize, though, that I'll need to show students some examples demonstrating how outstanding writing can be combined effectively with other media; I have a few examples in mind, but I'd like more variety, so I welcome suggestions. I also welcome suggestions from anyone who has tried this kind of assignment before. What sorts of problems might arise? What gripes might I hear? How in the world will I grade the finished product?
Writing in this medium is a two-way street. I've done my part: now it's up to you.
4 comments:
I love love LOVE the idea of requiring students to keep a blog. Perhaps they will need to write a paragraph per day, five sentences (in narrative form) about anything and everything.
Or maybe you could require that they start a thread in an online forum which you mediate. There are several options.
I think I will definitely use this when I begin teaching...!
Okay I went to find this for you, got all choked up and started crying...
Wade Bowen, one of my favorite singer/songwriters, went through a very difficult time withhis wife after their first son was born and he wrote a song about it. They learned that she was suffering from a bad case of postpartum depression. This has become a cause very close to his heart.
He held a benefit for Postpartum Support international and they created this video to accompany the song. The song alone is powerful, but to see these pictures (especially the way they've put them in order from hub/wife pregnant, then in the hospital the first time the parents meet the baby, then the dads alone with the kids and whole families together in the end) and see these men standing by themselves holding up the signs in the chorus (which is how many men refer to the time inn which their wives were suffering with PPD - they felt alone) - it makes the song so much more powerful and really gets to the heart of his meaning in the lyrics.
Here's the link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM_CtGsT2Tg
Sounds like a fantastic assignment!
Have you seen this? http://epc.buffalo.edu/
It's poetry but may give people ideas for multimedia essays.
Dearest Mom,
I just found that blogspot.com is not blocked at work! Yay! Now, instead of sitting bored, I can read up on what you've been up to and perhaps even update my own blog.
More on topic to this post, I bet it would be interesting to hear about students' challenges, surprises, and greater freedoms provided by the multimedia experience.
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