Tony's Reflection (changes)

CH-ch-ch-ch-ch- Chan-ges!

I began some unsteady wobbling through digital literacy over the last year. So, I had some knowledge coming into this course about blogging,

YouTube

and twitter,

and used them in a limited way. I employed Windows Movie Maker to make vocabulary videos for my students, posted them on YouTube and then tweeted about the fact that they were “up” for my students throughout the past school year, but what this class helped me do is expand my repertoire with these programs. I have a better breadth of understanding from spending this time over the summer exploring the possibilities that are out there with the support of the videos that we watched, the texts we read, and working alongside other students and a knowledgeable professor.

I had never heard about Prezi, Animoto, Jing, GIMP and SWISH. All of which will be indispensable to me as I attempt to build this “website/book of poetry/interactive city-wide scavenger hunt” that I hope will redefine poetry publishing in the digital age. I have become less intimidated by changing HTML codes on a blog which, before, looked like scrambled eggs to me.

What was also great about this class for me, was that I was afforded the time to research the potential of many digital applications that I plan on using for my poetry. For example, I knew about QR codes and had an idea of what could be done with them, but I had no idea of all the possibilities. I have already begun stylizing my QR codes with alchemical symbols (if you look carefully at the QR code at the end of my “Prezi” I placed the alchemical symbol for mercury over the QR code in GIMP and it still works!)

for the ten scavenger hunts that I am creating. I also knew about digital sound, but was not aware that the powerful program Audigy was available for free download. I was able to use this program to good effect for my first poetry video, “Ridgewood (Where We Wait)

(This is the poem from beginning to end without the local history)

and have started storyboarding other videos for poems. It is so much easier to reach these goals after this first successful step, and while I know I have a tremendous amount of work ahead of me, the journey will be easier now that I have been steered to the right path.

Thanks and best wishes to Professor Peele and all my other Digital Literacies travelers!

Tony Chiarella