Boys, ballads and glogster: Techno-poetry in Year 7

The new literacies are a change agent for the way in which we teach creating greater opportunities for collaborative student centred learning. This article focuses on the use of Glogster, an interactive poster display, in an all boys Year 7 English class room, in which the authors were exploring poetry, specifically ballads and the Australian identity. Most of the boys in this class have rich technologically literate lives outside of school and the authors wanted to begin with the students' areas of strength to build self confidence, motivation and resilience in literacy learning and to overcome some negative stereotypes the boys held around poetry. They found that through the use of the interactive medium that Glogster provided the boys were motivated and engaged; they were able to exercise a wide variety of choice to express their understandings of their poem and that meaning making occurred through collaboration and engaged interaction with digital texts.