UNIVERSITY OF THESSALYVOLOS, GREECE

Georgia Pantidou, Maria Paparoussi,

George Sotiropoulos

Integrating Information and Communication Technologiesin teaching Poetry and Arts

in Secondary Education

I.C.T. can be a powerful tool to perceive and

teach Poetry in new, attractive and meaningful

ways. The use of hypermedia and multimedia, in

which sound, picture and speech merge into an

amalgam, guarantees the attraction of children’s

interest.

I.C.T. offers the means for the integration of Poetry, Literature, Music

and Painting into an attractive combination which makes teaching procedure

more pleasant and opens new perspectives on interpretation.

The activation of every sense which takes place in the artistic atmosphere

created in the classroom leaves wonderful memories in children’s minds and

enhances aesthetic experience and further dealing with Art in general.

Sound and picture ought to be used as functional components and not

just ornamental, as a tool to perceive and understand the text through

the rules and techniques of other arts (Kalogirou, 2000), as a pictorial

representation of the text or an intercourse between students and

texts through perceiving and constructing multimodal texts.

A multimodal approach to teaching Literature would focus on making

good use of other semiotic systems besides Language, since every mode

adds a different meaning into the multimodal version of a text

(Nicolaidou, 2009) and thus its polysemy is being highlighted

(Hondolidou, 1999).

•Offering audiovisual content and useful information

• aiming at reading poetry via paintings

•visualising poetic inspiration and conception and

•combining words and verses with images

facilitate approach and intimacy with Poetry.

Multimedia presentations point out aspects of imagery, music and internal

rhythm of the text. The discourse between the Arts can be the essential

means to integrate ICT in teaching Arts in general (Nikolaidou, 2009).

Creating presentations, videos or digital narrations, paintings or

collages using pictures and music of their choice is an exceptionally

attractive and creative task for the students.

The inherent creativity of the children, dominated by imagination

and feelings, finds a proper outlet in Poesis, the Greek word for

Creation.

Subsequently creative thinking is enhanced and the aesthetic

pleasure is conducted to artistic creation or simply more

Literature reading.

“Under the midday summer sun”

Teaching Proposal

•A poem by Odysseus Elytis “Down in the daisy’s small threshing floor”,

•a short story by Alexandros Papadiamantis “Theros-Eros” (Summer - Love),

•three paintings by Vincent Van Gogh “Siesta”, “Wheatfield with a reaper” and “Field with poppies”,

•a collection of paintings by D. Moraros, based on “Theros-Eros”

•a piece of classical music by Antonio Vivaldi, “L’ estate”,

•John Markopoulos’ song “Down in the daisy’s small threshing floor”.

First Task:

Students listen carefully to Vivaldi’s “L’ estate-

Le quattro stagioni” and try to discriminate the

several sounds the composer used to describe

summer in the country. Then they check their

assumptions reading the description of the piece

and the corresponding summer sonet at

http://www.makingmusicfun.net/htm/f_mmf_music_library/hey-kids-meet-

antonio-vivaldi.htm.

Second Task:

The students search for Van Gogh’s paintings

and save them in a file. Since Van Gogh had a

great concern about the use of colour, students

are asked to visit the website

http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/

and choose Art Theory in order to find two

letters of Van Gogh in which he explains his

choices about the summer motif.

A pictorial theme which has been traditional in Western European art for

many centuries is that of the four seasons. These are generally

represented in terms of the various kinds of crops, weather, and labours

undertaken by peasants, typical of the different phases of the year

(Walker, 1981).

Thus students study and take notes about the place, the time, the human

beings and their actions, the colours, the schemes and the aspects. (For

further information about Impressionism and Light several articles can be

suggested as well as an educational film about Impressionism and

Surrealism). The task can be finished with a virtual tour in Van Gogh

Museum in Amsterdam http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp?lang=en

Third task:

Students are given the poem and the short story and they are asked

to write down the images Elytis and Papadiamantis have used. We

are more interested in the colours and the schemes of the nouns

(either human beings or nature elements).

They will discover that the tones of the colours mentioned in the

poem are the same with Van Gogh’s and that there are two

prevailing schemes, cycle (threshing floor, sun) and moving lines

(water surface, flames, grainstalks) which are used as symbolisms

to the masculine and the feminine element in nature.

So they are expected to combine all this in order to decode

the hidden message of the poem:

the erotic mood of young girls in midday, the magical time of

the day, when the Sun culminates and Earth receives all the

heating energy, is represented by the description of the

Nature.

In “Theros-Eros” by Papadiamantis (1891)Nature and Love are also the main theme.Nature is not only the scenery but it isclosely connected to the twist of the plot.

Love, as a manifestation of nature’sforce, is contrasted with the rush ofnatural elements (Zamarou, 2000).

The word Theros in Greek means summerand reaping so the students are expected tofind similarities with Van Gogh’s paintingand Vivaldi’s composition (serenity-storm-serenity).

The final product can be the synthesis of the

motifs they have traced in music

pieces, paintings, poetry and literature in a

functional unit.

So, what could students possibly do with all this

stuff in their computers?

The pursuit of the Arts is always an interesting

and attractive thing to do while in

adolescense, enhancing aesthetic and emotional

refinement as well as “poetic intellect”.

According to Elytis «One should probably not be

very intelligent to understand Poetry. It is enough

if you can have poetic intellect, which means more

emotion than knowledge».