Month: October 2006

Even though I’ve never been a teacher of Shakespeare, I’m often pondering the whole “Why learn Shakespeare?” question, as if I might stumble across the answer.  After all, I took the classes in high school just like everybody else, and claimed to hate them just like everybody else.  But then I got to college and had to pick a humanities project, and found myself strangely drawn back to Shakespeare.  When a chance came to work with an educational videogame company and pick my project, I chose Shakespeare.  Before I knew it I was becoming quite the Shakespeare geek. But enough of that rambling, back to the topic at hand.  My memories of learning Shakespeare in high school are of the “broccoli” variety.  You can guess what I’m going to say next, right?  “Trust me, it’s good for you, just do it.”  Bleh.  Does that ever work?  I’m pleasantly surprised to see the universe looking out for me, as Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users has an article on exactly that topic.  She’s got a picture of broccoli right at the top of the article! The way to win the battle, the article goes on to say, is to invoke optimism and hope.  Emphasize the pleasure.  “Joy is a more powerful motivator than fear,” it says.  I think the best teachers know this.  Nobody is really hoping to say “Sit down and shut up, and just read the thing so we can get out of here.”  Every teacher I’ve spoken with goes out of their way to seek out games and quizzes and activities for the students to do, and inevitably breaks out the movie at the end of class.  They know that it should be fun.  I guess the real question is, does the fun outweigh the “you have to do it, it’s good for you” weight that comes with the subject matter?   Is the real hurdle not with the subject matter at all, but with some students’ instinctive rebellion against anything they’re forced to do?  Do calculus teachers have the same problem? Just some rambling thoughts on the subject so that I get them down.  Feel free to chime in while I get back to work.  

The Simpsons have done Shakespeare a couple of times. I’m not sure I remember this particular scene, though. Bart as Hamlet, Ralph Wiggum as Laertes. Here’s my mad face! Rrrrrrrr!

Ok, I’ve known about Shakespeare the Meerkat for awhile, but never really saw any reason to post since I don’t follow the show.  For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, the Animal Planet television channel has a show called “Meerkat Manor” which is some sort of animal reality show.  They follow around like 40 meerkats and try to produce the documentary style footage up as dramatically as they can, like a mother meerkat defending the babies from predators, and so on.  One of them is named Shakespeare.  He’s apparently quite popular, with more than a few blogs on the subject.   Well now there’s something to post about.  Apparently season two of Meerkat Manor has started, and Shakespeare is missing.  Even the Today show picked up the story, but they don’t have a link up yet.  People are very upset.  The producers are being realistic about it – they’ve said themselves that they just don’t know what happened to him.  I think people forget that this is a show about animals tracked in the wild, so simply losing one is actually quite possible.  The producers assume that Shakespeare is dead and that they just haven’t found the body.

Anybody want to play a murder mystery Flash game based on Shakespeare?  BBC has one up called Seven Noble Kinsmen.  I don’t have time to play it in much depth, but I did get through the long intro (which is completely non interactive, just keep hitting Next) and eventually you end up in the mansion in the classic “Reclusive and potentially evil genius has invited all of his enemies to his mansion for revenge” plot.  Somebody play it through and tell me if it’s worth it :).  

Want a travel agent’s view of Shakespeare’s World?  For a change of pace from talking about politics and religion of the day, why not look around the actual geography of the time?  This Internet WebQuest was created by a junior high school student named Hugh Peebles (at least I think he’s a student, I assume he could be the teacher) and plays itself out like a game : ask the team a question (“What, in your opinion, caused a middle-class English boy to become one of the world’s greatest writers?”) and then turn them loose on the Internet to go research things like Holy Trinity Church, Stratford on Avon, The Globe, and so on.