Great Performances | PBS

Are you looking for ways to incorporate digital media into your teaching?

PBS Teachers is introducing a series of FREE monthly webinars featuring leading education technology experts, authors, or producers of PBS programs who will share ideas on using digital media to engage students in rich learning experiences.

March 2009

PBS Teachers and Classroom 2.0 are delighted to have representatives from the Folger Shakespeare Library as our guests for Remixing Shakespeare for 21st Century Students, the next webinar in the PBS Teachers LIVE! series. Mark your calendars for March 18 from 8-9:30 p.m. ET for this upcoming free webinar and join the discussion.

William Shakespeare’s plays offer invaluable lessons for students, but engaging the Net Generation in the Renaissance arts requires a new approach. In this webinar, the speakers will present and demonstrate methods for teaching Shakespeare using digital media. The educational activities to be presented were developed by trained workshop leaders and teachers during the Folger’s Teaching Shakespeare Institutes and sessions. Participants will learn practical and exciting ways they can incorporate Shakespeare’s King Lear and other literary works into history, social studies, English, and language arts instruction.

Great Performances: “King Lear” will air in late March 2009 on PBS (check your local listings).

Remixing Shakespeare for 21st Century Students
During the PBS Teachers Live! Webinar on March 18th, Shakespeare scholars from the Folger Shakepeare Library and innovative teachers from across the country demonstrated methods for teaching Shakespeare’s King Lear using digital media. Participants learned practical and exciting ways to use Web 2.0 tools to help students grasp Shakespeare’s language, characters, and more. The webinar also featured a sneak preview of Great Performances: King Lear, which airs in late March 2009 (check local listings).
Access Recording: Full version

Folger Shakespeare Library

Home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, Folger Shakespeare Library is a world-class center for scholarship, learning, culture, and the arts. Folger Shakespeare Library is a leader in how Shakespeare is taught today. It provides resources to millions of teachers and students in grades K-12 each year and provides local outreach programs for families and the community. It also publishes Folger Editions, the leading Shakespeare texts used in secondary schools in the United States. Learn more at www.folger.edu/education. Also, check out the Folger abridged version of King Lear for middle school students here.

Lesson plans from Folger’s Shakespeare Library:

• Fools for Love in King Lear
• Multiple Texts, Multiple Editions
• O, Lear’s Many Reasons
• Reader’s Theater, King Lear, and the Language of Gesture
• “The World’s Asleep”: But Not Your Classroom
• To Love, Honor and Obey (One’s Parents!)
• “Who is it that can tell me who I am?”: Performances of Lear’s Speeches
• Who’s the Fool in King Lear
• King Lear: An Abridged Version for Middle School Students

More will be coming to this section soon (May or June 2009).  If you are a teacher and would like to make suggestions about what you would like in this section, please post comments below.