The video above is my live e-poetry project.  For this assignment we were challenged to use our computers to create poetry that incorporated visual and sonic elements.  Using the program Camtasia, we recorded our computer screens as we toggled through well planned pages.  For the exact instructions to the assignment, please view the following link: http://teachmix.com/boostlit/content/e-poetry-0. 

When this project was first assigned, I knew I wanted to share my frustration with the superficial nature of pictures on social media sites.  It seems to me that many people post updates on their life to invoke a sense of jealousy.  There is such an obsession with finding the perfect picture and taking selfies that I began to wonder how genuine are people actually being?  Not only does this photographic obsession make me wonder whether people are absorbing the real beauty of the present moment they are in, but it also makes me curious as to what the value of a picture is.  Do people take pictures merely to share them for a moment?  Are social media "like" and "favorite" buttons incentives for others to craft fictitiously beautiful moments?  Why do we not appreciate the present moment or take time to reflect on the stories of past pictures?

I tried to search for a poem that accurately articulated my frustration but was not able to find such poem.  Thus, I decided to write my own.  Though by no means a poet, the poem used in the e-poetry is supposed to emphasize the beauty of events around us and the lack of appreciation we have for such experiences.  The videos selected in this video illustrate how there is so much to delight about in this world; yet, many of us fail to pay attention to it either because we only live through the lens of a camera or ignore the stories such videos and images carry.

For the live e-poetry, I treated the desktop as a canvas.  Setting up all my pages was one of the greatest challenges and required countless practices.  Often times, I found myself asking Google how to use keystrokes to flip through pages and change tabs.  I should also note that after working on this assignment, I feel much more in tune with my computer.  Nevertheless, planning was a crucial step in executing the live e-poetry assignment.  Ordering the pages, positioning them correctly on the screen, and insuring I used the correct keystrokes to bring up the windows were critical actions taken before filming the e-poetry. 

Below is an annotated video of my live e-poem discussing the rationale behind my composing techniques:

I would highly recommend educators of any discipline to include the live and edited e-poetry assignment in their curriculum.  Analysis of poetry or any other medium is a common practice throughout departments.  Throughout my schooling, I often engaged in oral discussion about text to explain thematic topics, highlight imagery, and question the symbolism of certain lines.  The e-poetry assignment similarly asks students to think critically, but then challenges them to articulate these answers visually rather than orally.  Through this process, students also analyze various videos and sounds and also draw connections to the original text.  

Working on the live e-poetry assignment was a great assignment as it taught me how visuals can enhance texts and invoke certain emotions.  As I previously mentioned, I am not a poet.  I chose to write my own poetry because I wanted to reflect my own frustration about current photography sharing practices, especially on social media, which I could not find elsewhere. However, the visual and sonic elements truly strengthened my writing by attaching a certain image to the text.  This project was one of the most time consuming assignments, especially because meticulous planning was crucial in the execution, but I am very please with the final product and look forward to sharing the final edited version on the next page.