Though I loved making my book(r), getting my post published has proved quite an ordeal! After an immensely sweaty run this morning, I came in ready to crank out my response. Why the rush, you might ask? Well, certainly not in response to a time crunch, but instead in response to a brain crunch.
When I looked at the options for thing#2, I found myself a bit dismayed -- more image makers? really? Don't get me wrong: they are great fun, and I love anything that combines words, images, and creative license; however, I have wondered about the power of the image maker to do more than just illustrate, a low-level cognitive task. Could an image generator be used for something more critical?
I used Voki and wordle last summer (their vestiges can still be found in the borders of my page), so I decided to just plunge ahead with bookr. And, to test, the "critical" factor, I applied it to one of my year's most challenging lessons, an analysis of Wallace Steven's "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." (Can you hear my students groaning right now? Oh, but look: there are a few of them smiling -- they really did like this assignment!) Anyhoo, one of the ways that we approach this very complex poem is by drawing out each stanza, sketching the images and details, letting some of the pictures come forward while relegating others to the background, all in the effort of seeing what it is that Stevens emphasizes in each stanza.
You ought to hear the conversations that we have: "No, it shouldn't be the blackbird's whole body, just the head and eye against the white mountain so the contrast is really exaggerated." (I live for these days, by the way...) I digress again: my goal with bookr then was to try something more than a mere illustration but to achieve something more complex.
Fortunately, flickr has a wide stock of bird photos, so away I clicked, finding satisfaction with some of the stanzas but more often a disappointment with the produced effect. In most other flickr photos, the birds featured most prominently, although in Stevens' work the bird is often tangential to the subject of the stanza. That proved most difficult to capture. I longed to layer on image over another, to crop and cut and paste and combine, just as my students did with their own sketches.
Anyone who dabbles in the creative process knows that dissatisfaction often accompanies a finished product, so I wasn't too devastated that the result was less stellar than I had hoped. Content to call this thing done, I closed down for the night and planned to write my response this morning.
I wasn't sure what I was going to write, but I envisioned the words "cute, but not critical," featuring prominently in the response. Fortunately while running this morning, it occurred to me that though the outcome was superficial, the thinking that it inspired was indeed more complex. I was forced to admit that the definition my students most often give for imagery, " words used to create a picture in the reader's mind," is so poorly informed. You see, words are not intended as a poor substitute for pictures; indeed, just the opposite is true: pictures are a poor substitute for the words that inspire them, lacking the depth and subtlety that only words possess.
I wouldn't have realized this if I hadn't created my book, and that is critical enough for me!
3 comments:
I know. I felt the same way. I just kept thinking I would be retired or dead before those were things we would actually be evaluated on or expected to do. And then I remind myself that in technology I am way ahead of some of my peers and that too is an awful thought. Oh well, I am just going to find joy in what I can do.
I finally got to actually read your blackbird post. It took forever to actually load. I think it was my compter being fussy. I must say if you write that much everyday you'll never finish. I used the voice thread today and it is cool. Also look at the the glog. When you enter the word collage it gives you definitions for the most common word, and word derivation and a word web. Then on the side it gives you related websites. If you click on a different word in the collage it completely updates the websites and definitions! It is much more than just artsy!
It wasn't glog I liked it was Wordsift. Check it out!
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