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I have a teacher asking if I know of any good digital projects for teaching A Midsummer Night's Dream...I got nothing :( I am a media specialist. Any suggestions?

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A simple project you could do on this one is show them a bunch of the groovy graphic novel adaptations of MSND...see this basic amazon search for MSND Graphic Novel.

Also see the excellent 4-page comic version of MSND in this excellent book - Tales from Shakespeare as a simplified model. From there kids can use any of these comic creator tools to adapt the play scene by scene in groups to make their own mashup graphic novel of the play:

Comics Creation Software Comic Life • Kerpoof • Comicssketch • Comics LabExtreme • PikiStrips• Toondoo • Bubblr • Comiqs • My Comic Book Creator • BitStrips • ReadWriteThink's Comic Creator• Make Beliefs Comix • Myths & Legends Story Creator • Cartoonist • Pixton• Chogger


Also here is another long MSND post I dropped a while ago that you might get some more ideas from:

Midsummer Night's Dream Allusions/Retellings

Going off the second post - they could also do videos of each act a la "The Midsummer Night's Smackdown"and post on YouTube.

Also always be sure to look at the Folger Shakespeare Library stuff for MSND. Here is a sample PDF from them.

They could also do some Twitterature - see this blog.

I hope this gets the juices flowing!

Ryan:)

Wonderful!! Thanks so much!

So I am on a similar quest, and I'm thinking about oral histories - having students interview parents (probably on video) about family dramas that end happily (in weddings and other celebrations). We may wander into Mendelssohn for a sound track. These are not "my" classes, but I'm collaborating with some sophomore English teachers who want to do something project-based and inquiry-rich along with the adventure of doing the play at least partly "on our feet." This is at a school with a majority population of Latino/a students - so events like Quinceañera may be relevant. My challenge will be to make sure there's a clear bridge between the real Shakespeare text and the worlds of the students, of course. That's why I'm hoping there's a good digital connection to be made.

This play is also about perception vs reality and fiction reflecting reality - and putting the reality in a nice tidy order at the end, once all the fantastic deceptions are ended.  It would be really interesting to have the kids pick a misperception, a twisting of roles/identities/appearances and track it through the text, relate it to their own current perceptions and create a multimedia presentation to present the concept.  Ideals of beauty, gender identity, even to some extent culture (if you extend the idea of the "fairy" and the "human" to culture) are all fair game when working with this text. 

Classical Comics (www.classicalcomics.com) has a Teaching Resource Pack aimed at teaching MSND to ages 10-17. It contains numerous activities arranged into subject sections, to help pupils engage with the text and includes the pages of the resource as digital files on CD for use on white board/PC. You can find a link to their MSND graphic novels here (www.classicalcomics.com/books/midsummernd.html) and the teaching resource is an accompaniment to those but can also be used with the standalone play.

The ISBN for the A Midsummer Night's Dream Teaching Resource Pack is 978-1-907127-75-5.

Hope that helps.

I'm not sure what's available as far as specific plays, but there's a new app called Shakesperience...more info here. It looks pretty cool, interactive, etc. Good luck!

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