Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 4, No. 145. Sunday, 7 March 1993.
From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Sunday, 7 March 1993
Subject: New on the SHAKSPER FileServer: COMPUTER TEACHING
As of today, SHAKSPEReans may retrieve COMPUTER TEACHING from the SHAKSPER
FileServer. COMPUTER TEACHING contains two articles by Michael Lamonico about
using the Riverside Shakespeare with WordCruncher to teach Shakespeare to high
school students (excerpts below).
SHAKSPEReans can retrieve COMPUTER TEACHING by issuing the interactive command,
"TELL LISTSERV AT UTORONTO GET COMPUTER TEACHING SHAKSPER." If your network
link does not support the interactive "TELL" command (i.e. if you are not
directly on Bitnet), or if LISTSERV rejects your request, then send a one-line
mail message (without a subject line) to LISTSERV@utoronto, reading "GET
COMPUTER TEACHING SHAKSPER."
Should you have difficulty receiving this file, please contact the editor,
<This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.> or <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>.
For an updated version of the file list, send the command "GET SHAKSPER FILES
SHAKSPER" in the same fashion. For further information, consult the
appropriate section of your SHAKSPER GUIDE.
===============================================================================
1. TEACHING SHAKESPEARE WITH A COMPUTER, By MICHAEL LAMONICO
Teaching Shakespeare with a computer sounds like an oxymoron. The very idea
of high school students exploring the language of the foremost writer in
history on a high tech machine seems ludicrous. My colleagues scoffed at the
idea, thinking that the mechanization of this process would result in nothing
more than lists of meaningless data. In a way this was my first reaction when
I first heard of WordCruncher, a concordance and text retrieval program
combined with The Riverside Shakespeare's Complete Works. But after
convincing my school to order this program in 1988, my teaching has undergone
a radical change, and I have spread my discoveries to teachers everywhere.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2. "SEEK ME OUT BY COMPUTATION"
After assigning my students a project that required the Shakespeare
Concordance, I was told by our school's computer director that the electronic
version of the Riverside Shakespeare and WordCruncher had arrived and was
ready to use. Later that day, as I sat at the computer and became familiar
with the program, one of my students sat at the next terminal and asked if he
could try it. Within 30 minutes he had searched through Hamlet and found the
references he needed to begin his assignment and left the computer room with
his print-out in hand. This program contains some advanced routines that will
take most users some time to master, but its primary use as a way to search
through the text and locate words is a task that most can master at one
sitting.