Innovation Profile 076

Visualising tragedy

Authors and playwrights who write tragedies weave similar ideas into their works in very different ways. Students who study literature need to understand what elements of a story make the audience perceive it as a tragedy and to see how differently these can be used in writing.

How can students best see in their mind the inter-linked ideas that make a tragedy? Focusing thought or discussion around one example of a tragedy may inhibit students' creativity, in thinking of their own novel ways to write tragedy. Surely it is more effective to produce a concept map, by discussing several plays or stories, and then to let students use the concept map to guide their own work.

And of course concept maps can be displayed on an interactive whiteboard so that a whole class can collaborate and share their ideas. They can jointly develop and capture a conceptual and ideas framework to work from. For an example of this kind of classroom activity see the Smart Technologies website, http://edcompass.smarttech.com/en/learning/activities/ideas.aspx and click 'elements of tragedy'.

There is nothing very new in the idea of using a concept map this way - it can be done almost as easily on a chalkboard. But think of all the extra ways in which the concept map captured digitally can be used

• It can be provided to all the students so that they can continue to refer to it as they write their own tragedies.
• It can easily be brought back for future lessons, perhaps to see how another story fits the map.
• Individual students can extend and further develop the map themselves.
• It can be put onto the school's website so students can use it from home.
• It can be shared with other teachers more easily.
• It can be hyperlinked to deeper explanation of the ways different tragedies have their impact on the audience.

Not many students can naturally hold in their brains sufficient memory of several tragedies, so that they can compare them. Most people need to link ideas and facts into a framework in order to remember and use them. The way that hyperlinked, multimedia information can provide interactive frameworks for knowledge may be changing how people think. It may also be increasing the ability of many students to understand concepts - and in many subjects.

The Smart Technologies Inc. Company Profile on our web site will give you an overview of the company and a list of other Innovation Profiles connected with it.

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If you know of examples of innovative use of ICT-for-learning that others would be interested in, please email innovations@eep-edu.org

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