An honest tale speeds best being plainly told

I wonder what would happen if Shakespeare was given the opportunity to return to the world of the living for a day in order to see what has become of his work. What would he think about the abundance of adaptations of his work that are floating around? Would he want to kill Kenneth Branagh for his musical interpretation of Love's Labour's Lost or congratulate him for his creativity while asking for a share of the profit? Would he have stormed on stage during this years Shakespeare in the park's seventies interpretation of Taming of the Shrew and demanded that the entire production be shut down? Worse, would Shakespeare walk into any middle or high school classroom in America and start crying? See Occupation Romeo

Shakespeare is one of the most, if not the most popular author taught in schools today. It is expected that every American child walk away from school with a least the ability to summarize Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet or A Midsummer Night's Dream. There is so much material out there for teaching Shakespeare that a teacher can go an entire career without coming up with his/her original lesson plans. Ironically, Shakespeare is also one of the least understood authors. Because there is so much material (including video renditions, graphic novels, abridged text and adaptations) that many teachers see Shakespeare as an easy teach. Plop in a movie and the kids are set AND bonus! you get points for using technology. WOOT! All I have to say is shame on you teachers!

The works of Shakespeare is one area I am looking into for my inquiry project. The best thing about Shakespeare's work is that most of it is very similar. He recycled many of the themes and character traits so one lesson for one play can be transfered to another without much modification. The English Journal is very interested in the use of Technology in the classroom, especially when it comes to Shakespeare. Joshua Cabat gives several unique and interesting technologically centered exercises that correlate with Shakespeare. (I will discuss them in detail in my project presentation.) One aspect of his article, "The lash of film: New Paradigms of Visuality in Teaching Shakespeare"that I found interesting was his quotation,

The arrival of visuality means that students are now able to manipulate images as easily as text. The first is that the use of images in the classroom no longer represents a kind of supplemental or ancillary literacy: it is literacy... (p57)

The reason this was so interesting to me was because we had talked about some of the questions that came to my mind after reading that quotation in class. First, what happens with copyright? If my students take a version of Shakespeare and manipulate the visual to fit the assignment, and then post it to youtube are they plagiarizing? Does the school need to pay royalties to the original production company of the chosen film? Can other teachers use what my students created as a tool or model in their own classroom? These are questions we as teachers need to ask ourselves and copyright issues become more and more relevant to public domain texts, visuals, and website like youtube.

I also really had to wonder about the idea that "images in the classroom no longer represents a kind of supplemental literacy." That is my whole project--How can technology supplement classical texts. If I am forced to think of technology as its own text, its own literacy then that is a whole new can of worms we are dealing with in education. It is easy for teachers to see technology as a supplement. It takes the pressure off of teachers if they don't feel like they need to literate in another form of literacy. Technology is for the technology classes not English. However, what Cabat is suggesting that visual literacy is in fact its own standing component within the subject of English, which means English teachers are going to have to teach visual literacy instead of just incorporating it as a supplement to classical literacy.

Although this is something to consider, I think I am going to stick with my topic of technology as a supplement. We cannot ignore the fact that Shakespeare is still going to be taught in classrooms regardless of the fact that visuals may be a part of the next generation of English standards. As teachers we need to suck it up and teach Shakespeare, but it doesn't have to be a chore. With technology we can create unique and fun exercises that engage students into understanding Shakespeare, not just summarize the plot of Hamlet. The technological tale may not be plainly told, but it definitely speeds best.