I was hoping this article would have more relevant content, given that it teases “fake Shakespeare sonnets” right in the title. But I found a gem of an idea that I love:
It’s called a Shakespeare-bot. A group of ten-year-olds have written a basic computer program based on language patterns. Plug hundreds of words into the program and it will begin to spit out fake Shakespeare sonnets.
“The trick with teaching computer science is to integrate it with other curricular subjects,” says Nicky Ringland, co-founder of Grok Learning, a platform of online computer science courses teaching children to code and providing teachers with much-needed computer science support.
That’s all we get for Shakespeare references. I am currently looking for links to the project and will update the post if I find any. Seriously, I’m thinking I’ll try to contact them directly.
What I love love love is the “integrate it with other curricular subjects” thing. Amen to that. That’s the essence of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) that’s all the rage these days. But that’s only one side of the equation. All those words are really just variations of each other (what is science without math? engineering without science?). But unless somebody puts them together, nobody is going to connect math and Shakespeare or science and Shakespeare.
This is something I brought up several years ago (“Teaching With Shakespeare“). I’m glad to see I’m not the only crazy one.