Shakespeare’s World is part of Zooniverse, a crowdsourced research platform (see “Zooniverse” Is One Of The Coolest Ed Sites On The Web – I Can’t Believe I’m Just Hearing About It!).

At the site, users can “Transcribe handwritten documents by Shakespeare’s contemporaries and help us understand his life and times. Along the way you’ll find words that have yet to be recorded in the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary, and which will eventually be added to this important resource.”

This project is really neat, as are all of the features at Zooniverse. You don’t have to transcribe sentences or pages – you can just identify words that seem obvious to you.

I can’t imagine a more engaging addition to a unit on Shakespeare then having students give it a go.

I heard about this new project today when reading an article in The New Yorker about it, Crowdsourcing For Shakespeare.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources For Teaching Shakespeare To English Language Learners.