Shakespeare In Video

A virtual rose by any other name is still a rose.

Since children typically spend hours battling trolls, aliens and a variety of other bad guys, a Canadian university is going to try introducing them to Shakespeare with a video game. "Speare" contains a link to a database about Shakespeare called Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare that was developed by the university as an educational resource.

While zapping enemy spaceships players will have to help recover stolen pages from Romeo and Juliet by memorizing lines from the famous play, learning facts about Shakespeare's life and creating synonyms and homonyms for parts of the missing text.

"The game is a way to capitalize on the time that kids spend on computers," said Professor Daniel Fischlin who headed the team at the University of Guelph in Ontario that developed the game called "Speare."

"I don't know of another medium that has seven-year-olds spouting Shakespeare," Fischlin added in response to charges the game might trivialize learning.

The Shakespearean game available online was tested on more than 100 grade six students and was launched to coincide with the anniversary of Shakespeare's death. With the introduction of the game, Daniel Fischlin plans to publish his findings in an academic journal.

The orignal purpose of the website was a site for Shakespearean lesson plans, video interviews and e-books of his plays. When professors realized the site's multimedia features were accessed mainly by young people, the idea for Speare was born.

A 12-year-old student, tested the game while it was being developed and said it taught her more about Shakespeare than books used by her older sister.

“Some of my grade 8 friends have just been learning from a book, and they say this is a more hands-on approach, and they learn more because it's fun," she said.

I went over to the site and it's very Final Fantasy like. It's slow but the graphics are nice and the game is simple and well done.

From the game:
The Prospearean Galaxy is named for a powerful and wise sorcerer whose knowledge comes from ancient storytelling. All resources are devoted to creating poetic codes, containing great wisdom to be used only for peaceful purposes. The power to speak is the power to do.

Peace reigned in the galaxy until a civil war broke out in the Verona System between planets Montagor and Capulon, who were entrusted with guarding Shakespeare’s ancient text Romeo and Juliet. Distracted by their squabbles, the Verona System is left open to invasion by the ever-encroaching drones of the power hungry Insidian Army.

The Verona galaxy was in charge of guarding the text of Romeo & Juliet. The player is Spear, in charge of retrieving the missing text.
"Speare"