Hyper-Poetry Collaborative Project

Introduction

One of the most difficult taks for an educator is trying to make the curriculum meaningful to the students. As a language arts teacher, I have experienced this challenge multiple times, often in regards to poetry. To meet this challenge I designed a hyper-poetry project that allows students to redefine poetry through the use of technology.

I collaborated with another teacher who was having problems keeping her students interested in poetry for an extended period of time. Students did not see the modern relevance of poetry as a means of expression. She also wanted to incorporate technology into her class, but wasn't sure how. The hyper-poetry project allowed her to solve this problem.

A hyper-poem is basically a poem that has no clear beginning, middle, or end. Students write poems either in groups or as a class about a topic (the topic can be chosen by the teacher or the group). Their individual poems will then link together to create one large hyper-poem. This is accomplished by using Dreamweaver to create webpages. This project is an excellent example of technology integration because technology is required to complete it. Using links from one poem to the next creates a continuous flow of poetry.

 This project can work for students in grades 7-12, but we incorporated it in a 9th grade class. Students must be aware of the basics of poetry so that they can initially write a poem. The reason I think this project works well with older students is because it forces them to redefine poetry. Students become very involved in this project because when they create their webpages they are encouraged to use the space on the page to enhance the poem (music, pictures, tables, color).

Poets like Howard McCord helped to pave the way for this idea because he is famous for writing nonlinear poetry. Feel free to click on the picture to explore some of his work.