How Can I Use YouTube Shakespeare in the Classroom?
By virtue of the site’s construction, the necessarily brief YouTube videos are perfect for introducing key concepts to be used in hands-on classroom activities of both an analytic and creative nature. Anyone with an Internet connection can connect directly to YouTube. For classrooms where YouTube is blocked, RealAudio Player allows one to download videos directly onto a computer or flash drive. This allows videos to be played in the classroom without an Internet connection and is particularly attractive if an offline copy of the video is needed for future reference. (Caveat emptor: There is naturally a certain amount of instability on YouTube, as on the Web in general. Not only do YouTube rules affect the availability of videos over time, but individual contributors frequently remove videos; more videos are added every day.) Most YouTube videos are no more than five minutes in length, which makes them more flexible for classroom use even than DVDs that are divided by chapters.
YouTube Shakespeare videos are infinitely adaptable to classroom lesson plans that focus on interpreting the Shakespearean plot and text. To a great extent, many of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s existing lesson plans in Shakespeare Set Free: Teaching A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth (O’Brien) can be adapted to incorporate examples from YouTube. For instance, the Shakespeare Set Free lesson plan for Romeo and Juliet asks teachers to compare two film clips from selected scenes of the play (O’Brien 154-55). YouTube videos selected through an efficient search on the site can easily be substituted for the movie clips. Other exercises that call for plot summaries or charts of a Shakespeare play’s action (e.g., Lesson 5 for Romeo and Juliet, pp. 130-31) can be replaced with or introduced by the quasi-pantomimic genre of YouTube video that is represented here by “Star Wars Hamlet Parody, Hilarious.” YouTube videos can be used to model either the selection of Shakespearean texts for further discussion or the process of translating Shakespearean text into a contemporary idiom. They can be offered, as films often are, as examples of visual translation of and commentary on the Shakespearean text that was their inspiration. Finally, YouTube videos can provide students raised on Tom Stoppard with examples of or inspiration for ironic and parodic translations of Shakespearean text and scenes. By far, the most prolific posters of Shakespearean videos on YouTube are high school students and young college filmmakers. They are recognizable as adolescents, albeit often talented and ambitious ones. Among the advantages that YouTube offers for classroom teachers over professional Shakespearean film is the close proximity in age between these young producers and one’s students that makes the YouTube artist a suitable classroom role model.
Additionally, YouTube can help students not only to generate but also to evaluate amateur Shakespearean video productions, modeling nicely the peer review processes that are often used for critical analysis of their own and of their peers’ efforts. The same type of comparative exercise for analyzing filmed Shakespeare can easily be adapted for assessing amateur videos, and teachers need not be overly worried about finding videos of exactly the same scenes for purposes of comparison. Among the videos introduced in this essay, for instance, students could compare the murder of Fleance in “Macbeth Parody (for an English Project),” whose setting and props are simple and whose production values are less than perfect, with the more sophisticated editing and film noir ethos of “Macbeth: Short Film Trailer.” Students might also bring in their favorite examples for critique. With the teacher’s help, perhaps, students can generate criteria—or an entire rubric—for assessing videos.
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