From Timon of Athens:

If wrongs be evils and enforce us kill,
What folly ’tis to hazard life for ill!

Shift around the letters, and it becomes:

Sarah vilified the wrong Arizonian to followers, bluffly deflects kills.

Context here and here.

The Antony and Cleopatra project is going well. Yesterday, I used the play to help the sixth-grade students make connections to present-day world events.

Antony and Cleopatra takes place in the first century B.C., a time when there was one global superpower in the world. By the time of the play’s opening scene, the Romans had scooped up most of the Hellenistic nations; only Egypt remained independent. However, both Romans and Egyptians were well aware that Egypt was living in Rome’s shadow. Philo has the opening speech of the play, and his racism and entitlement are readily on display:

Nay, but this dotage of our general’s
O’erflows the measure; those his goodly eyes,
That o’er the files and musters of the war
Have glow’d like plated Mars, now bend, now turn
The office and devotion of their view
Upon a tawny front; his captain’s heart,
Which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst
The buckles on his breast, reneges all temper,
And is become the bellows and the fan
To cool a gipsy’s lust. Look! where they come.
Take but good note, and you shall see in him
The triple pillar of the world transform’d
Into a strumpet’s fool; behold and see.

For a rank and file Roman soldier to speak of the Egyptian queen as “tawny” and a “strumpet” sets the tone for a world where there is an unequal balance of power.

Today, there is once again a single global superpower in the world, but that has only been true for the past twenty years. In fact, there have only been a handful of unchallenged superpowers in world history. (The Macedonians and the Mongols are the other two that come to mind. Others?) Therefore, this play offers a unique opportunity to explore power dynamics in our present world community.

How does it affect the world when there is one dominant superpower? What opportunities does that country have? What are its responsibilities in the world? How did Rome handle its power? How does the United States handle its power?

We had a fantastic conversation, and I think the students have a new lens for viewing both the play and world affairs.

There is only one posting to the message board, but I’m patient. And it looks like I am going to be working with an eighth-grade class on As You Like It asynchronously. I’ll be meeting with them the week after next, but most of our interactions will be online. Watch this space for updates!

UPDATE (That was fast): I’ve just added an Antony and Cleopatra category, so you can follow along with the project.

I’ve just added a new category called “Blended Learning” which is something I’ll likely be writing about in the next few months. Blended learning, for us, will refer to a learning model that consists of any combination of traditional face-to-face instruction with technology-enabled learning that takes place outside of the regularly structured school day.

The reason that I’ll be writing about this is that I’m currently working with a school that is part of the NYC Connected Learning program. All of the 6th grade students in the school have been given desktop computers to take home, as well as free broadband access to the Internet. The school is already using the Moodle online learning management system, so we have a real opportunity to leverage this powerful tool to extend learning beyond the school day.

I am currently setting up an online classroom for a 6th grade class on Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. The space is private for the students and other invited members of the school community. I can post documents, links, and message boards for the students. I will have limited opportunities to work with them in person, so this will truly be a blended learning model. I may also be setting up an online classroom for 8th grade students studying As You Like It who I may not even be working with in person at all. (This would still count as blended learning, as they would be studying the play in class.)

Do you have any suggestions about what I should include in the online classrooms?

Feedback on my recent post about The Rules has led to a concern that my humor is too subtle and not everyone might get that it is a joke. As this regularly happens to me in real life, I thought it might be a good idea to sprinkle a few drops of water on my dusty-dry sense of humor, and clear up a few items on the blog that were always meant to be taken with a grain of salt.

ONE. The Rules were a satire that applies equally to members of both sides of the political spectrum, including me at times. You should definitely vote.

TWO. To the best of my knowledge, Rick Astley never performed in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. That was a Rickroll setup. Sorry. But there really is a “never give her o’er” speech.

THREE. The rap song “Mary, Mary” by Run DMC is not really about Queen Mary I of England. The song was actually written by Michael Nesmith of The Monkees. No, seriously.

FOUR. King Henry VIII never really used online file-sharing services. Someone really did search for that, though.

FIVE. President Bush did not really let the door hit him on the ass on his way out of the presidency. That’s just an expression.

SIX. Shakespeare did not really use PowerPoint. If he had, he would have probably created the best presentations ever, and today’s scholars would be debating whether or not he had really created them.

SEVEN. I was never really serious about the feud.

EIGHT. I am not really a mixer, a battery, or any of the other riddle answers. I am forty, though.

NINE. Waiting for Superman is not really my favorite of the Superman movies. I like the one with Richard Pryor better.

TEN. I don’t really think my readers need a list of examples of when I was joking. I just thought it would be funny.

I am proud to announce that I have recently published a chapter in this book on teaching literature through technology. You can ignore the description; it seems to have been inadvertently switched with that of this book. Neither page describes my chapter, but you can read the abstract on the publisher’s page, or I could just tell you what it’s about.

Unlike this blog, the book chapter is actually about teaching Shakespeare! No riddles. No anagrams. No politics. (Well, maybe a little bit of politics.)

Here is the basic idea. I begin by citing experts who are skeptical of the ability of elementary school students to do Shakespeare. Specifically, I discuss the Dramatic Age Stages chart created by Richard Courtney.

Courtney describes “The Role Stage” as lasting from ages twelve to eighteen, at which point students are capable of a number of new skills that I would consider essential for understanding Shakespeare in a meaningful way. These skills include the ability to think abstractly, to understand causality, to interpret symbols, to articulate moral decisions, and to understand how a character relates to the rest of the play. So based on this chart, I would have to conclude that a student younger than twelve would not be ready to appreciate Shakespeare in these ways.

But Courtney bases his chart on the framework of developmental phases of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. These phases describe what a lone child can demonstrate under testing conditions. A more accurate and nuanced way of looking at development is provided in the work of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who described a “Zone of Proximal Development” (ZPD), which is a range between what a child can demonstrate in isolation, and what the same child can do under more social conditions.

So I wondered if fifth-grade students (aged 10) would have some of the skills associated with “The Role Stage” somewhere in their ZPD. If so, a collaborative class project should provide enough scaffolding to develop those skills and allow ten-year-old students to understand and appreciate Shakespeare on that level.

So I developed and implemented a unit to teach Macbeth to a fifth-grade class in the South Bronx, using process-based dramatic activities, a stage production of the play performed for their school, and a web-based study guide to apply what they had learned. The idea was to use collaborative projects to get the kids to work together to make collective sense of the play. I then examined their written work for evidence that they had displayed the skills associated with “The Role Stage” in Courtney’s chart, and I was able to find a great deal of it.

I also create a three-dimensional rubric to assess the students’ work over the course of the unit. I say a three-dimensional rubric because I use the same eight categories in all three rubrics, but they develop over time to reflect the increased sophistication that I expect the students to demonstrate. I then compare the students’ performance-based rubric scores to their reading test scores to demonstrate that standardized testing paints only a very limited picture of what a student can achieve. (I did say that it had a little bit of politics.)

Anyway, that’s what my chapter was about. I just saved you $180! And I’m hoping to return to a regular blogging schedule soon, so more content is hopefully on the way.

According to my sister, there’s a scene in Back to the Future where Doc Brown sets the clock in the DeLorean to a day 25 years in the future. Today. And today, probably not coincidentally, also marks the 25th anniversary of the US premiere of the film.

Of course, the real target year for the franchise will be 2015, when we can see how the future as depicted in Back to the Future II compares to the real thing. Until then, I invite you to enjoy this very funny song from Tom Wilson, who played Biff in the trilogy:

Back to the Future IV, not happening? I guess that makes sense. You can’t really do another BTTF movie without Michael J. Fox, and he is more or less retired from acting due to his illness. But do we really need a Back to the Future IV? Or is what we really need a remake of the original movie? Follow along with me, as I imagine what that might look like. And as this is a rough sketch, I invite readers to contribute to the vision, or even modify it as needed.

The film would star today’s version of Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly. I don’t know who that would be, but that’s kind of the point. The movie isn’t for me, it’s for today’s teenagers.

The year is 2015, and Marty McFly is a teenager who is an aspiring video game designer. He gets a call from his friend, Doc Brown, and goes to meet him. Marty learns that Doc Brown has created a time machine out of a Prius, and has bought some enriched yellowcake uranium in order to generate the 1.21 gigawatts needed to fuel it. Doc Brown pronounces “gigawatts” correctly this time. Homeland Security shows up and arrests the Doc, while Marty escapes in the Prius to the year 1985.

At first, he’s not sure what’s going on. He can’t get a signal on his iPhone, so he goes into a restaurant and asks where he can get online. The manager tells him he’s the only customer waiting, so there’s no need to get on line. Marty shows him his phone and asks where he can get reception. The manager tells him there’s a reception in the back. Marty asks how many bars he can get, and the manager asks him for ID.

Leaving the restaurant, Marty sees his young father, George, and follows him. Marty sees that George is about to be hit by a car, and pushes him out of the way. Marty is hit by the car instead. He wakes up to find a teenage version of his mother, Lorraine, who keeps calling him Isaac Mizrahi. He joins the rest of the family for dinner, which they eat while watching Family Ties. After dinner, they play Super Mario Brothers on the family’s new Nintendo Entertainment System. Marty quickly gets bored and wanders off.

Marty looks up Doc Brown, who points out that to send Marty back, they need to generate the 1.21 gigawatts (pronouncing it wrong this time) to power the time machine. Marty looks on his iPhone to find the next thunderstorm. He can’t connect, of course, but Doc Brown notices that Marty’s iPhone wallpaper is a digital picture of himself with his brother and sister, and his brother’s image is starting to pixelate. They realize that Marty prevented his parents from meeting, and he has to get them back together, so they can have their first kiss at the Pac Man Fever dance hosted by the school.

Marty tries to befriend George, but ends up crossing Biff, the local bully. To escape Biff, Marty borrows a skateboard from a local kid, and sticks a broom handle on the end to fashion a makeshift scooter, which he’s more experienced riding. Think about that for a second.

At first, George doesn’t want to go along with the plan. But Marty, knowing George is into science fiction, shows him a video clip of Avatar on the iPhone and George is so freaked out that he’s willing to trust Marty. He’s supposed to punch out Marty to protect Lorraine, but he ends up punching out Biff instead and the rest is history.

At the Pac Man Fever dance, Marty rolls his eyes at the primitive video game technology, and describes in great detail for those in attendance about his favorite video game, Grand Theft Auto. At the end of his description, he finds everyone staring at him slack-jawed. He realizes they may not be ready for a video game where you drive around stealing cars and beating up prostitutes, “but your kids are gonna love it.”

Your move, Robert Zemekis.

It’s time once again to check in on what searches people have done to find themselves at Shakespeare Teacher, and to respond in the name of fun and public service. All of the following searches brought people to this site in the past week.

I had considered this as a weekly feature after I finished with the lipogram experiment, but how much potential is there here, really?

You know, Adam. From As You Like It. If you can think of any good Shakespeare palindromes, feel free to post them here, but I’m done.

But if you’re looking for some Shakespeare-spelled-backwards fun, check out this still-unsolved puzzle from the archives. And feel free to solve it!

I think of the Queen as much younger than Cymbeline, and very beautiful, which is why she has so much power over him. But she needs to be old enough to have a grown son, Cloten. The play roughly takes place around the first century AD, when mothers would have been young. I’ll say late-thirties/early-forties for the Queen.

The expression “Let the games begin” does not appear in Shakespeare, and actually goes back much further than his time. But I deduce that the expression you’re thinking of is “The game’s afoot,” which comes from Shakespeare’s Henry V. Elementary, my dear searcher.

I have now had a chance to use the “Shakespeare Pro” app that I discussed here, and I’m ready to recommend it. The text is hyperlinked to a glossary, so you can look up specific words in context. There are still some issues to be worked out, but it’s definitely a good app to have. I have one minor quibble: when you click on a word, it gives you every definition of that word in Shakespeare, and not the specific way it is used where you clicked it. The two-volume Schmidt lexicon breaks down where the different words are used for each meaning. But, hey, for three bucks, this is a pretty cool thing to be able to carry around with you.

I really like Queen Margaret’s speech in Henry VI, Part Three. Margaret has captured the Duke of York, who has fought to claim his right to the throne. She tells him that she has had his young son Rutland killed, and gives him a napkin stained with the boy’s blood to dry his tears. She then taunts him by placing a paper crown on his head and ordering his death. Off with his head!

I’m not entirely certain about this, but I’m pretty sure that the Run DMC song “Mary, Mary” is about Queen Mary I of England. The lyric “Mary, Mary, why you buggin’?” means “Your royal highness, why are you executing so many Protestants?” Rather than wait to be burned at the stake, many Protestants chose to leave England, many of them no doubt exclaiming “I worry ’bout Mary, ’cause Mary is scary!”

I leave the task of responding to the remaining search terms to my readers:

Last week, I posted a list of my ten favorite iPhone apps. Recently, I helped my young nephews (ages 5 and 7) load up their iPod Touches with some fun apps for them. I had to do some research to find the best apps, and I’m pleased to share my experiences with the Shakespeare Teacher community.

Here, then, are my top ten recommendations for iPhone apps for kids, presented this time as a countdown:

10. Cookie Doodle ($0.99) – You can select the type of dough, roll it with a roller, choose your favorite cookie cutter, bake the cookie, and decorate it with a variety of icings and candies. In the end, you eat your cookie, of course. A similar app named More Pizza! allows you to prepare a different kind of treat.

9. MiniPiano (FREE) – This is just a single-octave piano keyboard, but probably better to allow the little one to explore this free app than on your expensive baby grand. There’s also a Drum Kit that has a free “lite” version.

8. TeachMe: Kindergarten ($0.99) – This is a great little drill-and-skill app for your youngster to practice word and number skills. Correct answers earn stickers which can be placed on provided backgrounds. There is also a version for toddlers.

7. Skee-Ball ($0.99) – Flick your finger to roll the ball up the ramp and score points in this digital version of the classic arcade game. It’s fun for kids who know the real thing. There is also an Arcade Hoops app to simulate the timed basketball shooting game.

6. SpongeBob Tickler ($1.99) – If your kids are into SpongeBob, they’ll love this opportunity to poke and prod him to hear his different catchphrases. They can also explore different underwater environments, and play some fun games they’ll find there. There’s also a Phineas and Ferb Arcade for kids who like the cartoon.

5. TappyTunes ($1.99) - Select from a variety of songs from diverse categories, such as Children’s, Classical, Devotional (contains religious imagery), Holiday, Patriotic, and Traditional. The notes are pre-programmed, but they’ll only play when you tap the screen, so timing is still in the hands of the user. I would have thought this better for the younger ones, but I spent more time playing with this app than I’m ready to admit.

4. Feed Me! (FREE) - This is a fun educational game where kids drag the correct answer to a hungry monster, who makes entertaining sounds when fed. Some of the questions require some critical thinking skills. I don’t know how long this will stay free.

3. iSteam ($0.99) – Don’t let the “Hot and Steamy Entertainment” part scare you; this app is as clean as your shower door. If you like wiping steam off of glass, this app is for you. You can even import your own photos… and then wipe steam off of them! The kids love this one.

2. Treat Street ($0.99) – Mix and match parts of Halloween costumes, and then hit the street! Pick a house, knock on the door (or ring the bell), and see what you get. Most treats are good, but every now and then a mean neighbor gives you a bug. Good treats go into the bag, where they can be sorted and moved around. The little one once spent over an hour solid on this one, laughing the whole time.

1. Scoops ($1.99) - This is a great kids game, but I’ve been having way too much fun with it myself. You have an ice cream cone, and have to tilt the device to catch scoops of ice cream as they fall. Avoid the onions and tomatoes, though, because if you catch three vegetables, you’re out. As you build your cone, you eventually slip the surly bonds of earth and can pass by the moon, Mars, Jupiter, etc., which is extra fun for planet-loving children.

Actually, my nephews’ favorite app is Monopoly, but I left it off the list because you probably already know what that is. They also enjoy the Game of Life. If there are any good board games or card games you already play with them, you might check to see if there’s an app. I also left off The Moron Test (which they love) because it was on last week’s list. I also gave them a few fun apps on the presidents. I left this off the list because I don’t know if your kids are into the presidents. But whatever they’re into, check out the App Store. There may be an app for that!

And as I was typing this list, it may have already become obsolete. The iPad, basically an iPod Touch with a larger screen, has been released. It looks pretty cool, but I doubt I will buy one. I have an iPhone and Macbook Air, so all of my mobile information needs have currently been met. But I have started to think of the device, starting at $499, as a low-cost computing option for schools. But if you’re planning to get an iPad for your family, all of the iPhone and iPod Touch apps will run on it, and the device is certain to spawn a new generation of app development. So the conversation continues…

It’s time once again to check in on what searches people have done to find themselves at Shakespeare Teacher, and to respond in the name of fun and public service. All of the following searches brought people to this site in the past week.

Probably not. Antony and Cleopatra did have three children, two boys and a girl. Cleopatra also had a child, Caesarion, from Julius Caesar. (”He plough’d her, and she cropp’d.” See how classy you sound when you quote Shakespeare?) Antony also had children from four of his wives.

After Octavius Caesar conquered Egypt (the events depicted in Shakespeare’s Antony & Cleopatra) he executed Caesarion, and gave the three children of Antony and Cleopatra to his sister Octavia. Remember (from the play) that Octavia was Antony’s last wife, so she’s now raising the children of her husband and his mistress. Little is known of the two boys, and if they had lived to adulthood, they would probably have been mentioned in sources of the time because of their parentage. It is possible they may have secretly been killed to avoid a later challenge to Octavius. But it’s also possible that they lived on and had children of their own. There’s no way to know.

The daughter of Antony and Cleopatra, named Cleopatra Selene, was married to an African king, and they had – at least – great grandchildren. Zenobia, a third century Syrian queen, claimed to be descended from this line. So it’s certainly possible that the descendants of Antony and Cleopatra are among us today. And if so, the opportunities to multiply between the 1st century and the 15th century would be massive. Therefore, we cannot rule out definitively that the Tudors are descended from Antony and Cleopatra. But could they know this for sure, let alone trace it? No. Those 1400 years weren’t exactly known for their record keeping, and there is too much motivation for people to invent a famous lineage along the way.

Margaret Tudor was Henry VIII’s older sister. She married James IV of Scotland in 1503, and a hundred years later, her great-grandson would become King of England (after Henry VIII’s line died out).

However, if you are asking about the character played by Gabrielle Anwar in The Tudors, you’re really looking for younger sister Mary Tudor. Another Mary would have probably been too confusing, so they conflated the two women into one character. Mary Tudor was the one who married an aging king only to be widowed three months later. Mary was the one who married Charles Brandon. I’ve only seen the first season of the show, so I don’t know what the character would later become, but in the first season, Margaret’s story is that of Mary Tudor.

Shakespeare had a lot of plots that centered around practical jokes. Often, they would blur the line between harmless prank and vicious revenge, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, am I right? Without any further ado, then, is my Top Ten list of Shakespearean pranks. Drum roll, please!

10. The Merry Wives of Windsor – I’m not a fan of this play, and I’m loathe to include it on the list of Top Ten anything. But a list of Shakespearean pranks would be incomplete without it, so here it is at #10. Suffice it to say, there are a number of pranks in this play. I’d list them, but I can’t be bothered.

9. Henry IV, Part Two – Hal and Poins disguise themselves as drawers and listen in on Falstaff’s bragging. They reveal themselves, but not before Falstaff has a chance to badmouth the Prince behind his back. The fun comes when Falstaff tries to talk his way out of it.

8. Measure for Measure – The “bed trick” and the “head trick” are serious deceptions and can hardly be considered a prank. But what about what I like to call the “fled trick”? The Duke pretends to leave Vienna, but instead stays back disguised as a friar. I guess the joke’s on Angelo. Busted!

7. Twelfth Night – Malvolio, imprisoned in darkness, recieves a visit from Sir Topas the curate. Actually, it’s Feste the jester disguising his voice. Playing both parts, Feste drives the supposed madman one step closer to real madness.

6. Much Ado about Nothing – Beatrice and Benedick’s merry war takes a surprising turn when their friends allow them to overhear conversations to make each believe the other is in love. The prank becomes self-fulfilling. “Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.”

5. Henry IV, Part One – Hal and Poins pretend to go along with Falstaff’s plan to rob some travellers. But they enter in disguise after the fact and rob the robbers! They reveal their prank after Falstaff has been boasting about his encounter with the unknown thieves.

4. The Tempest – Prospero uses his magic to get revenge on those who have wronged him. But the havoc only lasts the afternoon and there’s no real damage done. The whole play is one big prank.

3. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Puck changes Bottom into an ass. And Titania, having been spiked with a love potion by Oberon, falls in love with the creature. Hilarity ensues.

2. Twelfth Night – Maria forges a letter from Olivia to Malvolio, hinting that she is in love with him. Toby, Andrew, and Fabian spy on Malvolio as he reads the letter, which tells him to come to her in an outlandish manner… and he does.

1. Othello – Iago tricks Othello into believing that his wife has been unfaithful, so he kills her. Not really a prank, you say? Check out this video.

There are a lot of good monologues for men from King Lear. To start with, you can find monologues from Lear here, from Edmund here, and Edgar here. The female characters in the play have some great speeches, but nothing I would particularly pull out as a monologue.

You may be looking for Shakespeare: The Animated Tales, a series of half-hour condensed animated versions of Shakespeare plays. But I’ve also done a lot of work with students creating animated versions of Macbeth, As You Like It, and The Tempest. And since this is Shakespeare Teacher, I’ll offer some information about how to do it.

When I did these animation projects, the students did the artwork in HyperStudio, they recorded the sound in SoundEffects, and they aligned the two in iMovie. It was frame-by-frame, which is time consuming, but HyperStudio had a card-and-stack interface that made it go much more quickly. That was quite a few years ago, though, and I do mostly video projects now. I don’t know if HyperStudio is even still around, and people use Audacity for sound recordings today. iMovie is still the best game in town if you want to coordinate frame animation.

I know a lot of people who like to use the website Scratch for student animations. The one problem with Scratch is that you can only view the animations from the Scratch website. You cannot download the movie file and post it to YouTube.

I’ve heard, particularly from Shakespeare teachers, a lot of enthusiasm surrounding Kar2ouche. I looked at it once, a long time ago, and I dismissed it because there are a lot of pre-made templates, and I wanted my students to visually interpret the characters themselves. But time being a factor, I would probably recommend it, and I’ve seen some Shakespeare projects that look really sharp. Every so often, someone asks me if I’ve heard of Kar2ouche.

Of course, if your kids are into Second Life, there has been some animated Shakespeare coming from that quarter as well. There is also stop motion photography, which can be done with a digital camera, iMovie, and a lot of patience.

I can interpret this in four ways:

1. Was Queen Elizabeth the illegitimate child of Shakespeare?
2. Was Queen Elizabeth’s illegitimate child Shakespeare?
3. Did Queen Elizabeth’s illegitimate child actually write the plays of Shakespeare?
4. Was Queen Elizabeth an illegitimate child according to Shakespeare?

Elizabeth was older than Shakespeare, so #1 is a clear No. I don’t know of any illegitimate children of Elizabeth. This seems to me to be something easier for a king to pull off than a queen. If she had gone through a pregnancy, I doubt she’d have kept the nickname “the Virgin Queen” for very long. So we can answer a No for #2 and #3 as well.

As for whether Elizabeth herself was illegitimate, that’s a fair question. It all depends on how legitimate you consider the annulment of Henry VIII and his first wife. But Shakespeare certainly wouldn’t have painted her as illegitimate. When she was alive, he wrote plays that glorified her ancestors, and long after she died, his play Henry VIII treated her birth as a moment of great hope for the future of England.

So I’m not sure what you’re asking, but the answer is probably No.

I leave the task of responding to the remaining search terms to my readers:

I’ve noticed a lot of people I know have new iPhones lately, possibly because of the holidays. The iPhone is a fantastic device right out of the box: a phone, an iPod, a web browser, a voice recorder… what more could you want? Well, there’s plenty more you could want, and you can get quite a bit of it at the App Store online.

The iPhone is basically a mini-computer, and a computer’s nothing without software. I’ve been making the same set of recommendations to my friends, and I’m pleased to share them with the Shakespeare Teacher community.

And if you’re one of those “I don’t pay for apps” people, you really need to get over that. The ten apps I am recommending total less than sixteen dollars. If you think of the hundreds of dollars you paid for your iPhone, the marginal cost of upgrading it with a few apps is laughable.

These are listed in the order they appear on my iPhone:

1. Gorillacam (FREE) – Gives you a range of additional options when taking pictures with the iPhone. My favorite feature is that you can make the whole screen the camera button, so you don’t have to find that little button while you’re trying to catch the baby’s attention.

2. AppBox Pro ($0.99) – A collection of useful utilities, including a currency exchange calculator, random number generator, unit exchange calculator, and even a translator!

3. RedLaser ($1.99) – Use the camera to scan a barcode, and compare prices for the product online. I mostly use this to capture book titles when someone shows me something that looks good, as the results remain saved in memory.

4. Unblock Me ($0.99) – There are a number of iPhone apps in the “Rush Hour” family of sliding block games. This is a good one, because it has a lot of levels, so if you get hooked, it will last you a long time. There is also a FREE version if you want to try before you buy. I also like Blocked and Parking Lot, which are basically the exact same game.

5. Electric Box ($1.99) – This is my hands-down favorite game on the iPhone. You have to use a combination of logic and insight to place a variety of components on a grid to carry electricity from a power source to the Electric Box. It’s a very fun, addictive puzzle game.

6. Phase 10 ($2.99) - This is a card game, kind of a cross between Uno and Gin Rummy. I resisted the buzz on this one for a long time, but now that I have it I CANNOT STOP playing it.

7. 200 Great Books ($1.99) - If you want to read on your iPhone, this is a really convenient way to carry around a library of the classics. The interface allows you to change the font, size, and color of the text, and to auto-scroll, and tilt the device to adjust the speed! (There is also a Kindle reader for the iPhone if that’s more to your liking.)

8. U.S. Historical Documents ($0.99) – An amazing collection of U.S. Historical Documents for your browsing pleasure.

9. MyPhone+ for Facebook ($2.99) – You can sync your phone contacts with your Facebook friends. The most fun part of this is that when one of my Facebook friends calls me (if he or she is already in my address book), the Facebook photo comes up on my screen! (There now seem to be cheaper alternatives to do this, but this is what I have.)

10. The Moron Test ($0.99) - This is very silly, but a lot of fun. Follow the directions, but watch out for tricks. The latest version includes three different tests.

For this list, I avoided the official apps for well-known Internet services like Google, Wikipedia and Facebook, since you probably already know if you want them. And you’ll probably notice the Readdle Shakespeare app is not listed above. This is a fantastic app, but not everyone is a Shakespeare fan, so it’s not usually one of the apps I recommend. But if you do love Shakespeare, you should have this. There is also a new paid upgrade, which I’m planning to get. Among other features, it links specific words to a Shakespearean glossary. It looks great, but I haven’t used it, so I can’t recommend it yet. Stay tuned, loyal readers.