General Information Project Overview Curriculum Connections Learning Outcomes Resource Connections Evaluation

  General Information

  Project Overview

Hypermedia Shakespeare -- Romeo and Juliet will involve a group of our grade nine students creating web pages designed to allow them to share their interpretation of specific scenes in Romeo and Juliet through hypermedia. In addition, students will invite participation from other schools in a collaborative effort to produce a collection of web pages interpreting scenes from the entire play.

In addition, the involvement of our grade nine French Immersion students will allow French translation of the descriptions and possibly dramatization in French of some scenes. Visitors to our web site will be able to choose English or French versions of the pages.

After studying Shakespeare's play, groups of students will dramatize a short segment of one scene from the play. They will videotape their dramatization. The students will learn how to use video capture hardware and software which will allow them to save images from video tape to still pictures in digital format. They will learn how to record audio in digital (.wav) format. They will learn the basic principles of web page design which will allow them to display their captured images and link to the audio files on their web pages. In addition they will be responsible for writing and laying out a description in their own words of the scene depicted in the inline image. More advanced students will design their page with hypertext links to other WWW Shakespeare resources.

Other schools will be invited to participate in our project by either linking to our page or, preferably, sending a videotape of their interpretation to our students. In the latter instance, our students would incorporate images from the videotape into their own web pages, with appropriate credit being given to the cooperating students.

  Curriculum Connections

This project provides an extension to the Language Arts objective of experiencing and interpreting a Shakespearean play through a variety of media.

Relationship of project to objectives of the intermediate language arts curriculum:

• students will use dramatization to present their interpretation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
• students will write for a variety of audiences

  Learning Outcomes

• Nature of Technology -students develop understanding of the role and impact of information technology
• Technological Literacy -students develop abilities with using communication networks effectively
• Lifelong Learning -students work and learn by collaborating with others and use communications technology to present and share ideas and information

  Resource Connections

The STELLAR schools Internet connection will enable us to embark on a collaborative project involving the sharing of multimedia files. Because our pages will be graphics-intensive, a high speed Internet connection is highly desirable.

Resources needed for this project include:

• multimedia-capable computers with Internet connections
• hardware and software to permit frame-grabbing from video
• multimedia microphones for creating audio files
• HTML editing software

All of the resources indicated in the above list are already in place at Mount Pearl Junior High School.

  Evaluation

Evaluation of the project will include both process and product components . The teachers of English will evaluate the dramatization of the play concentrating on delivery and interpretation. The Learning Resource Teacher will evaluate the web page design. The French teacher will evaluate the French language component.