William Shakespeare coined the phrase 鈥渂rave new world,鈥� which is often used to describe the astonishing possibilities and potential problems of technological advancements.
But he probably never envisioned teachers would make his plays come to life with the help of artificial intelligence.
Pam Amendola, an English teacher at Dawson County High School in Dawsonville, Ga., decided to put an AI twist into her lessons on 鈥淢acbeth,鈥� one of the bard鈥檚 best-known tragedies and a play she鈥檚 taught for about a decade.
Her goal: provide an engaging hook for students who might not get an English literature nerd thrill out of the play鈥檚 signature 鈥溾�� soliloquy.
鈥淲hen you say Shakespeare, they shut down,鈥� Amendola said.
So Amendola had her students鈥�12th graders just weeks away from graduation and fully feeling low-motivation senioritis鈥攁nimate scenes from the Scottish play鈥檚 fourth act, using AI tools. (Last year, Amendola used pika.AI and ElevenLab.ai for the project. This year, she switched to Veo 3 ai, a Google AI video platform.)
Students acted as animators, actors, and directors. They read in the dialog themselves, but could give their character a different voice.
That meant the students needed an understanding of Shakespeare鈥檚 signature Elizabethan-era, poetic dialogue, which Amendola had already built by having students act out the scenes in class and discussing the work in literature circles.
Having students apply their knowledge of Shakespeare to develop AI-animated videos may sound like just a fun project. But if designed properly, it can actually be a way to engage students鈥� critical thinking skills, said Torrey Trust, a professor of learning technology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
鈥淵ou鈥檙e putting creative thinking in the hands of students,鈥� said Trust, responding to a reporter鈥檚 description of Amendola鈥檚 project. 鈥淎nd that is very higher order thinking.鈥�
Pairing lessons on a centuries-old play with AI literacy
In the centuries since they were written, Shakespeare鈥檚 plays have been staged in settings that wouldn鈥檛 have been familiar to their original audiences in Elizabethan London鈥攖hink 鈥淩omeo and Juliet鈥� in the Old American West or 鈥淭he Tempest鈥� in modern-day New Orleans.
Some of Amendola鈥檚 students went even more outside the box than that, animating 鈥淢acbeth鈥� with characters from favorite video games or TV shows, including and .
The activity gave Amendola a chance to pair lessons on a classic text with instruction on AI literacy.
So, along with parsing Macbeth鈥檚 descent from war hero to full-on monster, the students explored questions like 鈥淗ow do we use an algorithm? How does natural language processing work?鈥� Amendola said.
Amendola knows that many of her fellow English teachers are wary of AI鈥檚 ability to produce an essay on just about any topic seemingly from nowhere. They worry that if students rely on AI too much for writing, they will miss out on the 鈥減roductive struggle鈥� that comes from bringing their own voice and analysis to a piece of writing.
For Amendola, that makes assignments like the animated AI videos all the more vital.
鈥淛ust because they weren鈥檛 writing an essay didn鈥檛 mean that they weren鈥檛 learning and developing critical-thinking skills,鈥� created as part of her work as an Apple distinguished educator, explaining the assignment. Students had to 鈥渟how me they understood what was happening in each scene because they had to prompt [the AI tool] to get the desired result.鈥�
Her students sweated through creating the AI videos the same way they would have once grappled with writing a strong concluding paragraph.
鈥淢aking sense of the archaic language was difficult enough, but transferring their new knowledge to a tangible product was evidence of the reproducible skill that they can use after graduation,鈥� she said in the video.
