Interactive screens, mobile technology and Shakespeare are unlikely bedfellows.

‘Tis true, but Scholastic, the global education and media company, focused on helping children around the world to read and learn, is using LocaModa’s Wiffiti to make learning Shakespeare more fun.

In their Lesson Plan 5: Summarizing by Text-Messaging Shakespeare, they set out how teachers can safely use mobile technology and interactive screens to engage students.

I’ve taken the following excerpt from their website (the link above is well visiting - they do an excellent job of clearly explaining how to set up an interactive screen experience.):

DIRECTIONS
1. The teacher goes over mobile safety and appropriate use before beginning this lesson.
2. Before students begin reading Romeo and Juliet, the teacher reads the opening prologue. The teacher may also want students to be looking at the words as it is being read by projecting them on an overhead.
3. The teacher asks students to think about the prologue, and to summarize it in 140 characters by using their cell phones to send a text message to the Wiffiti screen that the teacher previously set up.
4. The teacher projects the Wiffiti screen along with the information on how to text to the screen (this automatically shows up on each Wiffiti screen).
5. The students begin to send their summaries to the Wiffiti screen via their cell phones.
6. Once the summaries are all up on the screen, the teacher reads through them and asks the students to vote on which one they think best summarized the prologue.
7. The teacher then selects a piece of dialogue or a scene from Romeo and Juliet, reads it, and has the students summarize the same way as above.

I find this so inspiring - not only in terms of the innovation in education (I wish I had such interesting classes when I was force-fed the Bard) but also because every day it is more and more obvious that media professionals HAVE to embrace technologies that enable dialogues with their audiences.

DOOH pros, where art thou?

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