Shakespeare in Bits App

Shakespeare in Bits

Today one of the English sections, which is currently reading Romeo and Juliet, used the iPads with her students. This application allows you to choose what you are reading by Act and Scene (we only have the lite version so far, so all we can use is Act I Scene I). Whatever you pick is then displayed as text and movie. You can read the text while the movie is playing. One of the coolest features though is that any word in the text that is highlighted, if you double click it, the modern version of the word show up. This is great for a book like this, when so many of the words in the play are no longer used, you can just tap them and it turns into a word you understand and recognize.

A few other features of this app, provide an overview of each Act and Scene, character analysis, and notable quotes from each act and scene.

We used this app with the push in Special Education class. They were able then to work at their own pace and comfort level, and listen or read, whichever they preferred. I think this worked really well. The students were all very engaged, they liked being able to watch the play, as well as convert words into modern English.
This is an app we are definitely looking into purchasing the problem is the cost is $14.99 per iPad x 30. You can do the math, but it is a pretty penny. We are currently discussing whether this is something that would be worth it down the road??? I will let you know what we decide!

No Fear Shakespeare

The rest of the classes (they are already finished with Act I Scene I) used the site No Fear Shakespeare (http://nfs.sparknotes.com/romeojuliet/), to read the story. This site provides side by side view of the play. One side is the original text, the other side is a modern version of the text. Kids were in groups and read this aloud, each playing a particular role. During their reading they had to find one example of an allusion, personification, and 3 thoughts. They had to do this with each version of text. What they soon found was that there were not many, if any, literary devices in the modern translation. They then had to explain why they thought this was.

They liked reading from an electornic device instead of a text book ( I think this just proves that they are digital natives). Most would prefer to read on a device like this instead of a print book.

Librivox

I also just added an audio book app (free of course) with access to tons of audio books (through librivox). Hopefully in the next few days we will experiment with having them listen to a portion of the play.