She may have been an 18th century English woman, but the characters Austen created speak to 21st century students of diverse backgrounds. Take Emma Woodhouse of Emma. What would high school be without its resident matchmaker? Or Anne Elliot of Persuasion. What woman has not regretted one of the relationships she ended along the way? And Mr. Darcy, the misunderstood “shy guy” of Pride and Prejudice? I’m pretty sure he sat next to me in Humanities class my freshman year in college.

The works of Jane Austen have remained in print since 1833, and they have enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the past few years as filmmakers have brought the novels to the screen. Masterpiece presents a Jane Austen film festival beginning with Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park in January 2008. February brings both Miss Austen Regrets, a biopic, and the classic BBC miniseries, Pride and Prejudice. Emma airs in March. Sense and Sensibility concludes the series March 30 and April 6.

Masterpiece has produced a Web site to support the series. A printable Teacher’s Guide that is rich with suggestions for approaching Austen in general and each film individually is available on the site; additionally, copies are being mailed to English department chairs at high schools throughout the country. You can also find book club resources, including a printable bookmark and a recipe for raisin drop scones.

Food and film will win their hearts, but how can we engage students’ minds? Blogging is a great way to encourage students to respond to their reading. Edublogs offers teachers and students free blog space and appropriate security. Students will need an e-mail address in order to create an EduBlogs account. Free, disposable e-mail accounts are available at Mailinator. Students can create an account there, use the address long enough to establish the blog and password, and then abandon it. The blog tool Word Press is also easy to use, and students will pick it up quickly.

Organize the blogs so that each student takes the role of a character from the novel. If you have more students than characters, consider inventing some plausible additions: the family’s cook, the village cobbler, a shopkeeper or innkeeper, all attuned to events in the area. Another solution is to have students work in pairs for each character.

Link student blogs via the blogroll on the main page of the class blog for ease in navigating. The blogroll will enable students to move from one page to another easily, so they visit all of the blog posts. It will also simplify the teacher’s job of keeping track of posts.

Following class discussion, encourage your students not only to post to the blog in character, but also to respond to one another’s blogs in character. As the students work to make their voices authentic, they will develop sensitivity to Austen’s style, tone, and wit. As a practical matter, being accountable for regular blog posts may also encourage students to keep up with their reading assignments.

A study of Sense and Sensibility, for example, might open with the dying words of Mr. Henry Dashwood (imagined and posted by the teacher) and responses posted by students writing as Mrs. Henry Dashwood, Mrs. John Dashwood, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret. An advanced student might even adopt the narrator’s voice. As students progress through the novel, the teacher can invite key characters from specific episodes to post an entry and then direct the class to comment on it.

Assessment of the blogs should consider consistent and accurate voice, writing style, and number of posts, as well as their content.

As a final project students might select one character from the novel and create a MySpace/Facebook-type page. Teacher Kristie Ojeda of C.E. Byrd High School in Shreveport, LA, has posted guidelines and a template for her “My LitSpace” assignment for others to share. Among other things, she asks her students to do the following:

• choose a quotation from the book for the “cool comment”
• select a song that represents the character
• describe interests
• list friends
• add comments

Since many schools block MySpace and Facebook, teachers might consider using a wiki, a slide presentation, or even paper to create the equivalent. Students who complete these requirements will actually be working on a sophisticated character analysis as they make connections between text and social networking.

Bring Austen into the present by asking students to choose a character and find a modern counterpart. List 5 defining characteristics for the Austen character and evidence of the same characteristic in the contemporary figure.

For example:

Students could follow up by using technology to create a two-sided bookmark, with traits of the Austen character on one side and of the modern character on the other. Images are available online. Remind students to cite the image source somewhere on the bookmark. If the comparison is unflattering and the contemporary person is a peer, students might want to consider discretion in using names, a practice of which Austen would no doubt approve.

Austen offers readers a positive view of life and encourages determination, common sense, and courtesy. Do you think literature with a happy ending can be as rich as tragedy? How might the Masterpiece films, with or without other technology, enhance student learning? How do you use technology to help your students see literature as something that speaks to them?

I’d love to hear your stories!