Julius Caesar Animated – 6907

Submitted by: Nicole Sanchez-Coe

School: Varina High School

Summary

After reading The Tragedy of Julius Caesar in class and watching the movie, students must pick a group to work with (minimum 2 maximum 4) and create a movie based on one scene from the play. They may choose to act out the scene themselves, video tape it, then edit it using windows movie maker, or they can use active inspire to create their own animation, or they can use go animate to create a movie clip on the Internet. They can choose to keep the Shakespearean language or translate it into modern day language. They can also choose to keep the original scene as close to the Shakespeare version as possible or they can completely change the characters to whoever they want, as long as the meaning of the scene and it’s importance stay the same. The purpose of assigning this project is to get students to connect Shakespeare to their life and bring the language of the 14th century to present day. The students also must make creative decision while using technology and work together collaboratively.

TIPC Ratings

Approaching – Students had to decide if they wanted to keep the original version of the language or change the language into a modern day form. To help with the language conversion, they were allowed search for sites like No Fear Shakespeare and SparkNotes on their own. After they researched translations on their own, they could then hold a group conference with me about their ideas for their project and discuss any other issues they are having.

Approaching – I modeled a range of digital tools and communication methods by showing group examples the previous school year. Students had to choose their own group and set up their own group norms on how they would collaborate and participate in the process. Some groups chose to work on different parts separately and then bring them together, while some chose to work as a group in making decisions through the whole process. They were free to choose which digital tools they would like to use for the project and some groups even came up with tools that were brand new (an app on a cell phone that turned the video into pencil drawings). They were allowed to use their cell phones if they chose to video tape a scene by acting it out and they had a variety of ways to get the final project to me (Vimeo, Dropbox.com, YouTube, schoolspace, virtual share).

Approaching – Students had a lot to think about before they began this project with their group: How to keep the theme of the scene in-tact and understand the hidden meaning, how to translate it into a modern day version, how to coordinate a scene and have the characters make sense together,

how to make the setting modern (not just the language). Students had to use critical thinking skills to analyze the theme and decide whether they were going to keep the Shakespearean language or change it to modern day. They also had to decide how much of the scene they were going to condense and how much they were going to change. By creating a media project and presenting it to their classmates it helped the whole class see connections their classmates had made using different scenes from the play.

Ideal/Target – Students developed original ideas and created products by applying existing and self-generated knowledge to create new ideas and products within and beyond assignment parameters (some students found an app on their cellphone that turned their video into a pencil sketching and they acted out the scene from Caesar using hand puppets with faces drawn on). The students had to present their final project to the class and we discussed why they chose those particular method and tools to portray the scene. We also discussed anything they could possibly work on for future projects similar to this one (the sound was low on some of the videos, some of the animation was a bit off from Active Inspire, some groups had a hard time getting the link to their Go Animate video to the teacher). Since the project was almost entirely student centered the classroom environment was one where students were engaged in their creativity and innovation the entire time.