Progress Report: Phase 2

This week my research paper has taken an interesting turn.

I created an Annotated Bibliography to document my research. During my research, I found several journals that talked about using technology in the classroom. There would be some obvious challenges in implementing using facebook, twitter, and blogging in a high school classroom, but I think at the University level there is no excuse for not using technology to enhance a student's learning experience.

So, in short, I have decided to write a research paper talking about the need, advantages, and challenges of using technology as part of an University classroom experience.

Earlier in the week I had e-mailed professors and asked about their methods of teaching Shakespeare and the digital media they brought into the classroom. I documented their responses on Saturday in a blog post titled Social Proof- Professors. Their responses made it clear to me that even in an advanced English course professors do not typically incorporate any more technology than a film adaptation or two of Shakespeare. There is a world of Shakespeare and learning online, yet these professors still use the typical classroom experience they had before the Internet.

Because I am writing this paper for a Shakespeare course I need to incorporate a Shakespeare play. I have been having difficulties on finding the most appropriate play to incorporate into my topic. I met with a group of fellow students investigated different aspects of Shakespeare on Wednesday during class. We determined to all research different plays, so I was turned away from Macbeth, and decided to take a look at Coriolanus. I discuss this change in Switching Gears.

To research this play I first read the original text on my e-book (an important first step). I wanted to get the audio book, but the library's version was checked out, so I just read it online for speed. I then found some Digital Media or digital art online and made a short bibliography on it. I also discovered a 2011 film adaptation. I really wanted to watch it, but could not find a version on it on Netflix, YouTube, blinx, or several other commonly useful websites that I found. I did some research and read some reviews on it, then was able to find some clips and analyze the movie through a couple of clips I found through YouTube and hulu. I wrote about a specific clip in my blogpost, Performance Analysis.

I am highly unsatisfied by the small amount of textual and performance analysis I have been able to do so far.  However, I have changed plays (yet again). So I this week I will post some analysis on my play of the week, A Midsummer Night's Dream.