Thirty-two different versions of Hamlet, all printed before 1641, are held in the vaults of the Folger Shakespeare Library, in Washington, and other institutions—and all 32 are going digital with the help of the University of Maryland.
The university announced today that its Institute for Technology in the Humanities will be working with the Folger library to digitize the texts. There is no single authoritative version of the tragedy, since what survived are editions cobbled together by printers from actors’ memories or from marked-up scripts used in various productions. Digitizing the 32 texts—a project financed by the National Endowment for the Humanities—will make it easy for scholars to compare and contrast versions, noting similarities and differences.
The result will be a free, open, and interactive Web site housed at the University of Oxford. And if Hamlet‘s opening proves successful, the project will move on to Henry V, King Lear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and the other plays. —Josh Fischman
14 Responses to Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be … Unless You Have 32 Digital Versions of ‘Hamlet’
mitchkeller - October 25, 2011 at 10:00 am
Thanks for sharing these examples, Robert. Making it explicit to students why the PI is better than just worked examples is a nice idea. I especially like questions with more than one right answer, as you can get a lot out of them. (Sometimes we don’t even realize there’s more than one right answer, usually because of ambiguous wording, until giving the question, and that’s OK.)
One thing I’d add is that I wouldn’t have shown the bar chart on the first one. With over 70% on a single answer, it’s going to bias the discussion very quickly toward that being right. I tend to show bar charts when there’s a lot of agreement, but keep it hidden if there’s a strong lean toward a single answer to avoid stifling the discussion (and thinking).
Robert Talbert - October 25, 2011 at 11:43 am
Good point Mitch. I have the TurningPoint software up on the screen by default, but I suppose I could mute the display just before getting the vote count.
Joss Ives - October 25, 2011 at 1:06 pm
Robert, I always have the very same issue with students wanting to have more examples. And they don’t seem satisfied when I point them to all the examples in the textbook, even if I point out that most examples that I would do (if I were to do them) would basically be the same as those found in the textbook. Instead of working examples I will use clicker questions to guide the students through all the main steps in a more challenging example. But even when I do that, I will often often quickly go through the execution part (after using the clicker questions to do the important setup steps) and its amazing how all the energy goes out of the room when I’m doing a few minutes of algebra. I am often thinking at that point “see, this is one of the reasons why I don’t do more examples.”
Robert Talbert - October 25, 2011 at 3:32 pm
So true, Joss. Many of the students who are most vocal about having more examples are the first ones to fall asleep, get on Facebook, or otherwise tune out when the examples start. And all students are tempted to do so — because watching someone do algebra is about as interesting as watching paint dry. (Unless my 3-year old suddenly jumps up at dinner and derives the quadratic formula. That would be interesting.)
Unfortunately I would even say it’s true that some will want more examples out of sheer exhaustion — at mid-term, they are feeling that having the teacher lecture on examples will slow the class down and somehow impart knowledge into their heads without any activity on their part. Tempting but false.
So for me, it’s about figuring out what the students *really* want — and really need — when they ask for “more examples”.
Sue VanHattum - October 25, 2011 at 6:30 pm
Did you make up those questions, or get them from a question bank? There’s a set of questions for Calc I at the Good Questions Project site, hosted by Cornell University. It would be great to compile good questions for other math courses. (I’m teaching Calc II right now and would love access to whatever questions you’re using.)
Serendipitously, I’ll be interviewing Maria Terrell, who headed up the Cornell project, this Saturday, as part of the free and open Math Future webinar series. The interview will start at 2pm Eastern time / 11am Pacific time. I’m very excited about this way of working, but haven’t started using it yet. I hope our discussion with Maria Terrell will help me ‘just do it’.
Later today, there should be more information here. (It’s not up yet.)
Lee Gibson - October 25, 2011 at 8:02 pm
I want to “like” this post by more than just pushing the button. I worked on the GQ project too, and pushed it out a little bit into college algebra. My questions are at http://mathquest.carroll.edu/resources.html, along with many other qbs, including the original GQ’s and one Maria did for Calc 3. She is the best, BTW. I’ve never walked away from a conversation with her without multiple new and interesting ideas to think about – and sometimes they are even my own new ideas!
Thanks also, Robert, for highlighting this great use of clickers. In an effort to bring together a number of the good ideas floating around right now, I’m trying to come up with ways to use clickers to introduce harder examples or activities step by step – and then connect the activity to team sized whiteboards, so that once the students are ready to engage the problem, they can work together to answer it. This seems to be filling a gap that regular PI leaves on the hard questions – without a common workspace for student teams, they don’t seem to interact with sufficient depth on the more challenging conceptual problems. It might also speed up the early stages of discovery style activities, when the students are just staring at the problem with no idea how to start.
By the way, when students ask me for more examples, I go back to my office and fire up the livescribe pen. The pencasts tend to make them happy because it is easier to skip straight to the part you don’t understand than in a screencast. There is an example of a pencast linked on my website, mathdoctorg.com, and tons of them on the livescribe website. Cheap and awesome tool!
Robert Talbert - October 25, 2011 at 8:44 pm
I made them up. I’d been using the MathVote project’s question bank (http://mathquest.carroll.edu/) about half the time for peer instruction questions since the start of the semester, but their test bank for the Hughes-Hallett calculus book (which I am using) stops after Chapter 8. I’ll be making more questions up for Chapters 9-11 of this book. I’ve been emailing Kelly Cline, who’s involved with MathVote, and I’m happy to say that those questions will be added into the MathVote project bank later this semester.
Robert Talbert - October 25, 2011 at 8:52 pm
Thanks, Lee. I’ve been curious about LiveScribe pens and I might check out some of your stuff.
electronicmuse - October 26, 2011 at 7:12 am
Wonderful article, and I couldn’t agree more about the value of peer instruction.
In fact, particularly in some collegiate endeavors, peer to peer networking accounts for a great deal of what students learn. We should do everything in our power to enhance such possibilities.
tardigrade - October 29, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Why did you set this up as peer-convincing, instead of have the students justify their answer in groups or as individuals?
Not everyone has a high tolerance for group activity, and it’s contraindicated for some things. While everyone needs some exposure to group work, I think it very important that instruction not become fixated on it.
Robert Talbert - November 1, 2011 at 5:02 pm
The “justify your answer to each other” is partially to hold individuals accountable, so that the learning is collaborative and not just group-think. It’s also preparation for what I assess, which is the individual students’ ability to justify their reasoning on mathematical tasks.
camarie - November 5, 2011 at 5:03 pm
I had a student come in to my office for counseling yesterday because he was upset and was thinking about dropping his calculus course. He stated he was having trouble figuring out why he was doing so poorly, because when he went to class he understood his brilliant professor and all the math functions, etc. In addition, he went to see her during her office hours to get extra tutoring because of his poor grade in the class. He stated he understood everything in her presence and was grateful that she was going the extra mile to explain things so clearly. I then asked him if he had the opportunity to practice or do the problems in class or during the tutoring session. It was as if a light bulb went on. He said, “no” and realized that she was doing all the work and he was passive and then he stated that his previous instructor required peer instruction and review and she did not. He left feeling better because he lost confidence in his math abilities prior to the insight and then realized that he needs to put in more effort and practice whether the instructor provides that opportunity or not. I applaud your teaching methods because it supports active learning and critical thinking.
tardigrade - December 4, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Ok.
As a student I’d personally like to see less of an emphasis on group work of any kind. Are there other, individual ways this could be constructed in parallel to the group work?
Robert Talbert - December 4, 2011 at 11:04 pm
The whole thing involves an interplay between individual and group work. “Classical” PI involves working out an explanation for yourself first and then hone it in concert with others.