Embedded is my Photostory -- a photographic interpretation of a passage of literature (or poem, in this case) set to music and read or performed aloud. I used the same poem, "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio," for an audio project earlier this semester, although I re-recorded my voice here so as to lengthen the piece a bit.

Overall, this was an enjoyable experience, and I felt an even greater affection for the poem after using it on consecutive projects. I think this is something teachers might consider taking advantage of with their secondary students -- it furnishes students with the bonus of continuity and perhaps fosters in them feelings of mastery and ownership of a given work. That being said, I'd allow my students to work with new passages for the sake of variety or if they simply didn't like the way the first one turned out.

As with the Soundscape project, I think what makes this project especially worthwhile is that the interpretive choices students make for the featured pictures and audio should enrich their understanding of the passage. For this Photostory, I wanted images that corresponded to the thoughts and emotions invoked by the poem's words. When reading this poem, I envision dilapidated structures and disaffected natives -- Rust Belt disillusionment. In retrospect, I think I whiffed a little bit on this architectural consideration other than the slide annotated by "... dreaming of heros."

Additionally, this poem depicts a time and place of a bygone era, which is why I tinted each photo in sepia tone in hopes of offsetting the sharp and modern look of digital photography. As for the selection of key phrases from the poem and their relative placements on their respective images, I wanted to keep it rather minimal (since it's a brief poem, anyway), and really hoped the few words splashed up there would resound even more deeply with viewers -- "dying for love," "suicidally beautiful," gallop terribly," etc.

Just for fun, if you'd like to hear the poet or compare my reading to his, here's a link to James Wright reading his poem "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio." He reads it quicker than I do and prefaces its reading with a quip, which sets an entirely different tone for the audience, in my opinion.

As for the process of working with the software -- iMovie for me, since I'm a Mac user -- I found it generally easy and intuitive based upon my previous experience with GarageBand, since they're at least tenuously related apps. One thing I'd keep in mind moving forward, however, was that iMovie is a RAM hog, and it was choppy at times, even crashing my computer at one point (which is rare). I purchased this computer in July 2009, so the hardware is relatively new and the software is all up to date. But the concern for teachers is whether students will have the technology at their disposal that can meet the demands of the assignment, and it's something I'd investigate a bit before assigning this project. Otherwise, I refrained from resorting to tutorials for the sake of authenticity (since I tend to think students are hands-on and trial-by-error learners), and got the hang of it rather quickly.