This week we celebrated the Bard's birthday William Shakespeare (April 23).
And suddenly I found on Facebook this interesting project. In honour of Shakespeare's birthday, an adaptation of a classic play to help nurture the emotional experiences of young people, specifically around bullying.
"A Shakespeare play on Facebook? Yes! It's true! And it's happening NOW! You can be a part of Shakespeare's classic comedy as we present it in real time over three days."
The project explores social media as an educational tool and will send a powerful message about cyberbullying to today's plugged-in students.
"In Much Ado, the villainous Don John destroys an innocent girl's impending marriage by conspiring with others to make her appear unfaithful. The girl, Hero, fakes her own death to escape the scorn of her fiance and family until the truth can be revealed and the lovers can be reunited.
Much Ado also features the memorable characters of Beatrice and Benedick, who start the play at each other's throats and learn to love each other through some clever trickery on the part of their friends."
(about the play)
Much Ado About Nothing is presenting on a special page through status updates, posts, pictures and videos.
The students helped create separate pages for their characters complete with pictures, in-character bios and likes.
It’s a great way to make Shakespeare more comprehensible to teenagers, kids, and especially kids who don’t enjoy Shakespeare right away.
A hip-hop introduction to "Much Ado About Nothing" is an original animated adaptation, written and performed by Flocabulary.
Watch the video below and discover how Shakespeare really got his idea for the play!
Education:
It's a creative project to introduce in the classroom, Literature and Civics curricula.
The project is meant both as an educational resource and a tool to combat cyber bullying. And that is a fanstastic idea to motivate students to learn about Shakespeare in the school and to fight cyber bullying.
Facebook has been the site of much cyber bullying. But Facebook is making efforts to provide a slew of tools and resources available to report abuse.
The project is hosted on Facebook, where many students are already present!
I have developed cross- curricula projects with my students to fight bullying in the school, some years ago, based on literature, music and civics. Cyber bullying came after.
The performance is in full swing (it began yesterday), but you can catch up on the action by reading everything that has happened so far.
"Cyberbullying is a serious issue for today's youth, so we're very excited to bring this message into their territory and language," said Jessica Semler, program coordinator for The Ophelia Project. "From a literary standpoint, it is great to show how relevant and spot-on Shakespeare still is."
G-Souto
27.04.2011
Copyright © 2011G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®
References:
Weekly Reader
Much ado about nothing
A social media theater production
READ Magazine: Fiction, nonfiction, and reader’s theater for grades 6–10, April 15, 2011
The Street, Weekly Reader And The Ophelia Project Take On Cyberbullying With A Shakespeare Play Presented On Facebook, April 6, 2011
