Ode to an Orange: Digital Adaptation


When I read the “Ode to an Orange” piece by Larry Woiwode, I was struck in particular by how strong the sensory experiences of eating oranges had stuck with him since his childhood. He had detailed information about craving, awaiting, and consuming oranges, and had made strong associations that have stuck with him and manifested in beautiful descriptive language. I am often fascinated by the ability of my own children to relate to the world around them, the associations they make, the freshness of their experience. This motivated me to approach the process of adapting Woiwode’s essay through the lens of my own children’s experience. 

I first interviewed each child while they ate an orange. I told them I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, and just wanted to hear about their experience eating an orange. I wanted to know if they had any strong memories about oranges, or if anything came to mind when they thought of oranges. It was interesting to see the different approaches they took to these questions. My teenage son is perfecting his practiced air of apathy, but his goofiness breaks through occasionally, even when he’s trying to give a YouTube-esque review of the oranges. “Overall, 8 out of 10.” he declared at the end. 

Because I loved the text element of the piece so much, and it was the words that brought the sensory experience, I decided I wanted to keep the text as part of the project. As I watched the interviews with my children, I wrote down all of the ways they talked about oranges, and then I accessed a free wordcloud generator online and turned their descriptions into a wordcloud. I was able to find one that let me shape it like an orange! Huzzah! I’ve always liked wordclouds, but didn’t have experience finding the tool and creating one myself, so that was a good experience as I fiddled with features and decided what worked best with my conception. 

As we select texts and assign tasks to our future students, it is important that we consider their relationship to the text. How do they experience the text, or the subject of the text. In what ways does it relate to them or have the power to influence them? In what ways can they interact and be enriched or empowered? How will they then relate that experience in a way that is meaningful or leads to deeper learning for them? Through accessing the Woiwode text, I was able to dive into and refresh new literacies: I hadn’t used iMovie in some time and it took a little while to learn some features that have changed, and I was able to develop a new literacy with wordclouds that I’m sure I will use again in the future for a variety of interests. Giving our students opportunities to experience and create new literacies through exposure to new texts and assignments will help them develop pathways for learning that will bear fruit for years.


Click here to access the movie!


Comments

Lauralee said…
This is such a creative and unique way to both create a new adaptation of the work as well as using technology tools to do so! Bravo! Plus, your kids are really cute! :) I also really appreciated the fact that your process is part of the final product, as seen in the video as well as the nature of the word cloud. This is a really neat medium which could be used in a variety of ways within the classroom as well, and it would be interesting to incorporate this as part of a literature project, perhaps. I remember taking a Digital Humanities course here at BYU and we had the opportunity to experiment with a lot of cool tools like this. I think it is especially interesting to consider how the original text is changed with reference to technology and how the visual element also changes the way that we interact with it. Fantastic job! Wish I had thought of doing something like this!
January 25, 2022 at 10:00 PM
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