A Possible Reading Assignment with Glogster

Normally when I think of reading assignments, I imagine the student sitting with a book or an article; that's it. With glogster, however, we can easily assign multiple forms of text to supplement the reading -- pictures, sound clips, videos, manuscripts. I think this addition could really help students understand poetry since they are often intimidated by it. To show them that poetry doesn't have to be scary or difficult, I would start with a glog.

As we have discussed in class, listening or seeing poetry being performed changes the way a person understands the poem, so I made a glog that could introduce students to this difference. I would ask students to start on the left side of the glog, reading part one of "Howl" first; then, they would listen to Ginsberg performing "Howl." To simplify the assignment, I tried to include the instructions on the actual glog rather than on a separate blog or in class. This is my "rough draft" of my glog; if I had more time, I would come up with some intermediary questions to ask the students while they listen to Ginsberg. The goal would be to have the students come to class prepared to discuss the first part of "Howl," both the performance and the content of the poem.

For another possible assignment (I still have to flesh this idea out), I might ask students to free-write about the significance of the words on the glog's wall. I found my glog's background online, so if I were actually going to do this, I would select each word to make my own background. Or, students could even make their own wall with what they think are the most substantial words and phrases and then write in their blogs about why they chose a few of their words. By selecting content directly from the poem and analyzing it in their blogs, students demonstrate their understanding of the text, making their glogs easier to assess. They could still add images or videos to personalize their glogs, but the core of the assignment would be to closely examine the language in "Howl."

For whatever reason, I've been having complications embedding my glog, so I'll also include the link to my original glog.