![Sample our Language & Literature journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5941/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Language-Literature.jpg"})
Abstract
Educators today have no agreement on what “electronic Shakespeares” in the classroom might mean, or even what they should mean. In this essay, I will survey a variety of electronic resources that have been used in classrooms effectively, and examine a variety of ways that students can use them to learn. In doing so, I hope to suggest ways in which these tools can be used effectively in the classroom today, regardless of which tools ultimately become part of a teacher's arsenal in 20 years. Jerome McGann argues that “humanities education …will not take the use of digital technology seriously until one demonstrates how its tools improve the ways we explore and explain aesthetic works…”. It is my hope that this exploration can help to provide that kind of explanation. By looking in turn at wikis, blogs, online texts, concordances and a wide range of “performance media”, I hope to identify those areas where good pedagogy can be enhanced by the strengths of the Internet. In doing so, I argue that using the Internet in the classroom can be a humanizing tool and a promotion of the kinds of close reading the Internet may otherwise discourage. Nonetheless, electronic Shakespeares look a lot like electronic Joyces and electronic bibles: like Shakespeare's cultural ubiquity, his exceptionality is a social construction, not apparent in the application of electronic methods.
Notes
1. Indeed, Samuel CitationWeingarten's 1939 discussion of using audio in the classroom sounds surprisingly modern.
2. For a different take and a series of student projects that demonstrate understanding, see “Illuminated Texts” at <www.awaytoteach.com>.
3. If the result of the Understanding by Design process is more student-centred learning, it suggests a shift in the role of the teacher from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side.” Alan Galey suggests in an August 2007 letter to the author that it is a shift to a Prospero-like stage manager of the process of classroom learning. See any of Ted Sizer's books, but especially Horace's School, for more on this potential shift in framing the role of the instructor.
4. See <www.wikipedia.org> and <www.qwikiwiki.com>.
5. The participants in Robin Farabaugh's “ShakespeareWiki” workshop created the useful <www.shakespearewiki.com> to share their projects.
6. See <www.blackboard.com>.
7. McGann defines this as “a horizon where multiple meanings are generated by readers working in and through texts …” (2).
8. See <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog> and <www.blogger.com>.
9. See <users.ox.ac.uk/∼ctitext2/publish/comtxt/ct12/lagrand.html>. This is not technically a blog, but uses similar technology.
10. See <eebo.chadwyck.com>, and the various other sites referred to elsewhere in this journal.
11. Among them, I recommend the facsimiles of the British Library's Shakespeare quartos, <www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html>.
12. See <lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/fw.html>.
13. See <edsitement.neh.gov/websites_all.asp?filter=4>, <www.webenglishteacher.com/romeoandjuliet.html> and <www.pbs.org/shakespeare/educators/primary/>.
14. See <www.folger.edu/primarysources>.
15. See, for instance, <shea.mit.edu/ramparts>.
16. For example, <www.opensourceshakespeare.org/concordance/>.
17. <shakespeare.clusty.com>, 27 Jun. 2007.
18. See also <ise.uvic.ca>.
19. <www.google.com>, 29 Dec. 2007.
20. <www.YouTube.com>, 28 Jun. 2007.
21. For an argument on increasing student investment through performance, see CitationSizer. For an argument on increasing student enjoyment through performance, see Jeremy CitationEhrlich, “Critical Study”.
23. However, I'd put in a plug for the beautiful, provocative and entirely ambiguous <www.textarc.org>.
25. Specific references to this experiment are no longer on the Web, but see <userpages.umbc.edu/∼rfarabau/engl250h/>.