Guest Blogger - H. Nielsen - Poetry and Technology Together.

Recently Sullivan Heights had the opportunity to participate in the Poetry In Voice National Poetry Competition.  For me, this meant learning how to use some new technology, as the entries had to be submitted on line.  This made me a bit nervous, but I had three very keen and talented students who really wanted to compete, and they assured me they had a friend who could help with the tech. stuff if we needed it, so we decided to give it a try.

Each student had to memorize three poems to performance quality, and then we had to record them from the waist up against a solid background.  The contest stipulated that we were not allowed to do any editing of the recording and stressed the importance of good sound and picture quality.  We solicited the help of a student to film the girls - she did so using the IPad and a camera.  We had to do several takes to get the sound quality where we wanted it, and found that the IPad produced the better video.  

After gathering all the video, which was way more time consuming than we thought it would be - luckily we gave ourselves a couple of days - it was time to upload the video clips to the site.  This was the scariest part for me, as I had never done anything like this before.  Luckily our tech. facilitator was excited to help, and with her expertise and the clear directions provided by the Poetry in Voice website, we were able to upload the videos with very little difficulty.  It only took about an hour, much less time than I had assumed, and it was much easier than I thought it would be.  The whole experience was a good learning opportunity, and definitely something I would repeat in the future.

Thank you Ms. Nielsen for sharing your learning experience.