Value of online Sources
Online sources provide valuable secondary and tertiary sources for students at the college level. Websites such as Sparknotes, Cliffnotes, and Shmoop provides students with summaries, analysis, and study guides that can be used as aides to help with understanding a retention. Students taking online courses can especially benefit from these extra sources of information to help make up for the lack of in class discussion and facetime with professors and other students. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a literary classic that has several obstacles that are hard for new readers to overcome. In my opinion the first and greatest obstacle to reading Hamlet, or any of Shakespeare’s works, is the language. Languages naturally change over time in both meaning of individual words and their pronunciation and Shakespeare’s writing is no exception. Hamlet is also a complex piece of work that requires several readings to fully understand. When used correctly online sources provide valuable tools and information to students.
The first and most well known online source is Sparknotes. Sparknotes provides a plethora of information on a multitude of topics. For Hamlet Sparknotes provides everything from the context of the play to study topics and essay topics. It provides summaries of characters and of every scene and act. Given the language and complexity challenges of Hamlet I found that it can be useful to read the text and then use a website like Sparknotes to review the material and aid in comprehension of the material. The study questions and quizzes are helpful for review and serve as another aid to comprehension of the material. Overall I think Sparknotes serves as a good source of additional information for studying and reading Hamlet.
Cliffs Notes is another source that can be used for Hamlet. Cliffs Notes is similar to Sparknotes in the material that it provides readers. Every scene in every chapters has a summary with an accompanying analysis section. Like Sparknotes these sections serve as a good review for a student who has already read the original material. The analysis sections again serve as a good source of information that looks at the important sections of the each act more closely. A section that differs between Cliffs Notes and Sparknotes is the section for Study Help Practice Projects. While most of these seem too elaborate for a standard class or for an average study session I think they could serve as good thinking exercises to go along with the characters within the story.
Book Rags is another source that is similar in setup and layout to both Sparknotes and Cliffs Notes. The big problem with Book Rags is that it only provides small sections of information without purchasing a subscription to the service. Given that the previous two sources mentioned allow for full access to all of the content without needing a subscription Book Rags serves as a poor source for additional information. The information that is freely available on this website is similar enough in content to other free sources that it truly doesn’t seem worthwhile.
The fourth source I have looked at is Shmoop. Shmoop’s section on Hamlet contains largely the same information covered by both Sparknotes and Cliffs Notes. Unlike Book Rags Shmoop is another free source for students which makes its information much more accessible and useful. Sections that Shmoop has that the other free sources do not contain are more visual sections. Shmoop contains a large number of infographics that can be used as a good visual representation of the characters and some of their traits. Shmoop also contains premade flashcards covering quotes, themes, symbols, and various other subjects. As an added bonus Shmoop has sections for teaching Hamlet. An added section in Shmoop that can be helpful to students is the Why Should I Care? Section. This section gives a brief summary of the story and how it might relate to a modern person. According to Shmoop “Hamlet is having a teenage crisis. Okay, so he doesn't dye his hair and plaster pictures of Fall Out Boy all over his walls, but he does start wearing all black and talking to himself a lot—the 16th century equivalent