Sunday 12 February 2012

An App Based Solely on _The Waste Land_: What's Next?

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In keeping with Michael's introduction of interesting and informative apps, this app produced by TouchPress is a learning tool that delivers T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. The app provides full published text and various readings of the poem by T.S. Eliot, Sir Alec Guinness, and others, as well as a filmed reading performed by Fiona Shaw. There is also commentary from notable scholars and writers that provides various impressions of the poem. The app is fully searchable, and allows one to jump back and forth between the text and the performed passages without skipping a beat. In addition, it contains the original manuscript pages of The Waste Land, complete with Ezra Pound's notes, and one can move back and forth between the published text and the handwritten original text. I can't do it justice here, so you can see for yourself:


At the very least, this is an interesting example of what is being produced currently in the way of learning tools, and, although my technological foresight is definitely not authoritative, it certainly seems to have the potential to turn into a larger, more comprehensive product.

1 comment:

  1. What an amazing app. I remember that dramatic-like quality to the Wasteland when studying it as an undergrad, "Hurry up please its time", but Fiona Shaw takes it to another level. There is so much that makes sense here: the keying of text to voice, the mix of print and ms. versions. There is so much you could do with this in the classroom, for assignments ....

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