On the back of my post regarding the evolution of maths teaching, a friend who teaches English reported a conversation which occured in a faculty meeting last week.
Young, enthusiastic Gen X teacher: So, I've been thinking. With Shakespeare, as an assessment piece, we could get them to make an avatar of either Romeo or Juliet.
Second young, enthusiastic Gen X teacher: Yeah! OR we could get them to design a
My Space page as if they were Romeo or Juliet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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At dinner as we were discussing this, Himself said "Well, it's a different world..."
Only if we LET it be my dear. ONLY if we let it......................
9 comments:
Oh my! I thought you were joking at first, but I see you're not. Makes the English major in me cringe. I wish you *were* kidding.
Oh dear that is beyond sad!
Actually I'll bet the Romeo and Juliet myspace pages could produce some interesting stuff. You know, they'd have to do the blog entries and bios and interests and all that. They could think up what to substitute certain categories - like there wouldn't have been any movies for them to have for favorite movies, so what would they put in that area? They would have to make a page for the parents so R&J would have "friends". It might be a kind of neat project - like maybe whoever was done with their regular work ahead of time could do it for extra credit or something. :-) :-) :-)
Oops - I guess my boy was signed in under me. Sadly, the above comment came from me, the 40 year old, and not my 11 year old. :-0
Man. my comment got deleted. I know you disagree, but I think that the latter idea is a really good one. You have to get kids interested, engaged and if you use their choice of media to do so, they'll be more interested. Do you remember the Leonardo DiCaprio/Clair Danes Romeo & Juliet? Got a whole generation interested in Shakespeare, but it certainly didn't deviate that much from the intent of the author. You could do the same thing with modern social media. Although MySpace is a bit dated, Facebook would be the way to go. The more I think of it, the better idea I think it is. The kids would have to read the play in order to do a decent job. They may not read it in a traditional classroom setting.
Seriously, I think it's brilliant.
I feel like a big loser - I think that Romeo and Juliet MySpace pages sound like a great idea! How creative!
My thought is this:
At least the young, Gen X teachers are still enthusiastic.
gah. WWSD? (What would Shakespeare do?)
I'm just not sure...but feeling a little old that I'm not more excited about the challenge it might provide the kids. I must give the teachers some credit - is that what it takes to get through to kids today? I fear my girls are going to end up learning about great literature on some iPhone app.
Okay, I think they're on the right track, they just need more depth. The avatar thing could be cool if they flesh it out more. Make them draw their own and put them in period clothing and in a scene from the play. You know, sort of make them think it through. Could be a good thing.
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