To study a man such as Garcia Lorca demands that students have simultaneous access to his music, poetry, sketches and scholarly essays about his life and times. These materials need to be woven together to three dimensionally illustrate Lorca's influences, desires and contributions to society as an artist and voice of the times.
TK3, a piece of software that can best be described as a media processor, was the tool that offered us the ability to give life to The Lorca Project. With TK3 Dr. Gaitan was able to link together to an ample library of poems, songs and essays which offer her students a portal to learning about Garcia Lorca.
Dr. Gaitan's students interacted with the virtual Lorca Project as they would a paper based book. They have the ability to "mark up" the poetry and essays using a virtual tool kit that reflects a students experience with paper based learning. Virtual sticky notes, hi-liters, notebooks, bookmarks and searching tools aided students in their quests to understand Lorca and develop an accurate picture of his life. The power of TK3 was evident with its searching capabilities and unique way in which TK3 stores all of the "mark ups" that students make. All of the bookmarks, hi-lites, notes etc. are recorded into a page that can be accessed to review ones notes easily. This made note taking easy and streamlined the task of using one's notes to answer topic questions.
Ultimately Dr. Gaitan's students created their own TK3 book in order to answer their research topics. It wasn't a flawless journey as students at points struggled a bit with the technology. In the end though the projects were much richer and deeper than could have been accomplished using paper alone. The inclusion of music and pictures to bolster points was invaluable and a sign that once a project like this is done using multimedia it will be impossible to go back to conventional methods of teaching and learning.