Learning made easy

Prologue

Shakespeare In Bits was first released in 2009 by boutique Irish edu-tech company, Mindconnex Learning.

Founders Michael Cordner and Fergus Connolly had previously worked for an educational publisher developing products for the nascent digital learning market and had witnessed the many challenges facing educators. Traditional approaches, centred on print-based educational materials, were being upended at a ferocious pace by pressure from all directions to introduce technology into the learning environment. Meanwhile, debate raged about the efficacy of such technology and how best to integrate it.

So, along with a talented team of educators, writers, and animators, we set out to build resources that would show how technology could deliver solutions rather than problems.

Enter William Shakespeare

Then came the practical challenge of content. Enter William Shakespeare! We believed that Shakespeare’s plays were particularly suited to an innovative digital treatment that could harness the many advantages of digital technology. After all, they are not simply texts to be read but scripts for dramas to be watched and heard too. Our goal would be to retain academically robust texts but deliver them in a form that would appeal to an audience being increasingly seduced by rich and entertaining digital media content.

So was born Shakespeare In Bits, an all-in-one package, presented in a way that enables contemporary students to read, digest, understand and appreciate the text in bite-sized chunks or "bits" both in a personalized or class setting.

A digital learning resource with real outcomes

Today Shakespeare In Bits has been embraced by hundreds of schools and thousands of individual users, as an effective teaching and learning tool. Feedback from our many users is that Shakespeare In Bits succeeds in introducing the Bard’s most popular plays to a generation of technology-confident students.

With five titles currently — Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet and Julius Caesar — Shakespeare In Bits provides an easier, more digestible way of tackling Shakespeare, with real outcomes.