UNIVERSITY OF THESSALY
VOLOS, GREECE
Georgia Pantidou, Maria Paparoussi,
George Sotiropoulos

Integrating Information and
Communication Technologies
in 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 is
closely connected to the twist of the plot.
Love, as a manifestation of nature’s
force, is contrasted with the rush of
natural elements (Zamarou, 2000).
The word Theros in Greek means summer
and reaping so the students are expected to
find similarities with Van Gogh’s painting
and Vivaldi’s composition (serenity-storm-
serenity).

So, what could students possibly do with all this
stuff in their computers?
The final product can be the synthesis of the
motifs they have traced in music
pieces, paintings, poetry and literature in a
functional unit.

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».