Parallel Pedagogy

I really love the concept behind parallel composing for a lot of reasons. It fits in with the conversations we’ve been having already about mixed media in the classroom and how we can use visuals to remediate texts for our students. I feel like parallel composing is the other side of that. Students can used mixed mediums to convey complex ideas and themes, or to convey things they don’t know how to put into words! It’s a powerful tool, and one I’m excited to use in the classroom.

For my parallel composition, I cheated just a little, in that I used a poem I had written last summer for a project on Random Autobiographies. I edited it down a bit and cleaned up a few lines that I didn’t like as much upon revisiting, but I figured it might actually be helpful to work with a text of my own that I was familiar with. The random autobiographical poem was meant to convey snapshots of your life that you remember with clarity, even if the moments seemed inconsequential in retrospect. I chose to work around my random autobiography because a lot of the images and experiences I brought up would probably be enhanced for an unfamiliar audience with the use of visual elements.

Clicking here will lead you to my random autobiography parallel composition created through adobe spark.

So — as for the technology. Adobe Spark is free to use Though, as with all free things nowadays, you can pay to unlock all the features, but for my purposes (and the purposes I see applying in the classroom, I thought the free version was perfectly sufficient.)

Here’s what I like about it: Spark is super easy to use. You pick a format, or work from scratch, select a theme or color scheme, and just start putting together slides. There are options for voice overs and videos to be added in to the presentation, and given the time and resources, I think the voice over function in particular would be really helpful, especially in conveying poetry. There’s something special about getting to hear a writer read their poem the way it was meant to be read — and being able to record it ahead of time takes away some of the anxiety of feather circle reading.

In general, any tool that allows me to use visual aides with poetry (even my own subpar poetry) is going to get a nice A in my book, especially if it’s intuitive like Spark.

The downside with Spark isn’t with the technology itself, really, but rather with accessibility in school. Spark slowed down my computer after a few minutes, so even a school with total computer access might have difficulty using Spark in the classroom. Not only that, you’re asking students to take something vulnerable already (writing a poem) and making it even more vulnerable by integrating their voice or the images they associate with it. It’s a very personal kind of project to ask students to do, but Spark could be used in conjunction with a less personal text to alleviate that sort of anxiety in students.

The issue of personal content in the classroom is the crux of the question I want to pose to my fellow teachers. How do you create an environment in your classroom where students feel safe and comfortable sharing their personal work/personal expressions? I made my Spark video very personal, and it’s hard for me to post it! How do we expect students to do the same? Or how do we create a way for students to become comfortable sharing?