What is XMAS?
The MIT Shakespeare Project has been developing tools to aid in the study and comparison of Shakespeare texts, images and films for over ten years. We are now beginning the outreach phase of our Cross Media Annotation System (XMAS), developed under the MIT-Microsoft iCampus Initiative. By combining on-line discussion and text editing with video sequences on DVD, XMAS makes possible a range of new teaching and learning techniques in which text, video and images can be studied, excerpted, and shared remotely in more flexible ways than in the past.
This research was supported by MIT iCampus, MIT's Undergraduate Reseach Opportunities Program and the John Reed Fund.
"XMAS has been in use at MIT for several terms, has worked very well to support online student discussions that include video examples, multimedia essays, in class presentations and online instructor comment on student work. The ability to include precisely defined visual evidence in work on Shakespeare films has transformed my own teaching and we are now planning a two year project to distribute the system to sites outside MIT."
- Peter S. Donaldson,
Professor of Literature
Director of MIT Shakespeare Project
