A grudging defense of multimodal projects

A visiting poet gave a lecture in one of my classes yesterday. During the question and answer period, one of my classmates asked what he thought about young people's interest in poetry these days. His answer was grim. The poet concluded that most young people dislike poetry and will continue disliking poetry no matter how much they are exposed to it in college or beyond. The reason for this is not because poetry is confusing, abstract, or even downright nonsensical. Any viewing of modern cartoons will demonstrate that today's youth have no problem with these qualities. Instead, the poet believed that young people dislike poetry because the first (and often only) place they encounter it is in the classroom. Thus, the abstractness that should have been whimsical becomes threatening. Young people see poetry and consciously or subconsciously think "How will I be tested on this?"

I think one of the advantages of technological or multimodal composition is that it is not yet (or perhaps ever to be) associated with the classroom. Movies, music, IM chat, texting, these all still exist in the realm of "fun" or at least practical.

Another inherent advantage of multimodal composition, particularly film based composition, is that its requisite accessibility invites a wide audience. Ever since Durst we've been learning that students are pragmatists and they will tailor their work to suit the audience. More often than not, the audience is just the teacher and all they really want out of him or her is an adequate grade. If you enter a project with the philosophy "let's make this just good enough" then it can never be anything but that. I don't believe in accidental brilliance. The only way a student will ever ache with caring while composing is to keep in mind the right audience. No offense to the teachers of the world, but frankly, we by ourselves generally aren't enough.

I've been browsing through youtube over the last few days, looking for inspiration. Most of the time I'm not searching for "school project" type videos. I'm just clicking on stuff that makes me laugh. It's amazing how many exuberant, unprofessional, and utterly brilliant videos there are that kids have just slapped together for the fun of it. Well, not just "slapped together." Some of them, while clearly made by amateurs, are remarkably sophisticated. People pour hours of creativity and effort into these clips, and for what reason? They want to send their compositions out to a wider audience. They want to say "Hey, look what I did!"

If I could inspire half the dedication I've seen in some of these videos, I'd consider myself a successful teacher. And on that note, I'm off to put together my own mulimodal project. God help me figure this damn thing out.