![]() ![]() Of course, “digital Shakespeare” encompasses much more than this essay has space to address but the various iterations of the digital Shakespeare rhizome have been amply explored elsewhere. ![]() Specifically focusing on pedagogy and literature-related reading technologies, this essay will try to offer an initial evaluation of the best practices for using the digital humanities to foster critical reading and thinking skills in the Shakespeare classroom. How can professors balance the developmental dangers of technology with the potential advantages of the digital world? Research is just emerging on this topic but this essay represents an early exploration into how best to teach the close reading and critical analysis of Shakespearean literature in a digitally saturated environment given recent research and discoveries involving digital technology and the brain. Apps such as Offtime, Freedom, and Flipd can aid students during study time by turning off social media and other distractions and professors can provide tech-free zones of learning inside the classroom but digital Shakespeare is more available than ever before. Worse, professors are under constant pressure to include elements of the “digital humanities” in their classrooms (often with little understanding of what that means), 1 even when brain scans and pedagogical studies have shown that many digital interactions actually impede learning. Even knowing this, students will not abandon their phones. Those engaging with electronic texts read in the shape of an F and store the information they do encounter in a part of the brain that is not designed for long-term memory. Studies have demonstrated that this obsession leads to numerous cognitive deficiencies: many of our students cannot focus on extended tasks, they cannot retain important information, they cannot filter out irrelevancy, they cannot appropriately process emotion, and so forth. Students today are chronically distracted by technology. But how do these resources intersect with the teaching of Shakespeare in the university classroom? In particular, how might digital technologies aid or impede the effective teaching of close reading and critical interpretation in relation to Shakespeare? Rather than discussing the various creative and interactive platforms and media available to the Shakespeare instructor, this essay focuses on recent studies exploring the consequences of using e-readers and other digital devices on individual brains in order to present (1) the demonstrably negative impact of “multitasking” on student learning, (2) the potentially damaging effects of using e-readers and e-texts in the Shakespeare classroom, and (3) suggestions regarding the best practices for teaching students to engage with complex texts like the works of Shakespeare. Digital Shakespeare is all around us: mobile apps, YouTube videos, online “participatory cultures,” electronic playtexts, web-based educational materials, even Shakespeare-themed videogames. ![]()
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