At Uxbridge High School, Middlesex, Year 11 students were left speechless as their English Literature class was interrupted by a Shakespearean performance like no other from rapper Professor Green and actor and RSC Governor, Meera Syal.

The GCSE students were performing a scene from Much Ado About Nothing when Meera Syal and Professor Green burst into the classroom and put a new twist on the famous dialogue between Benedick and Beatrice – the play’s sparring lovers. The performance was to launch the new RE:Shakespeare app from Samsung and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Meera Syal made her Shakespearean debut as Beatrice in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Much Ado About Nothing in 2012. Combining her acting prowess and Professor Green’s lyrical genius, the unlikely duo took over the class to show the relevance of Shakespeare today and launch the new RE:Shakespeare app from Samsung and the RSC, which brings Shakespeare to life for students.

Professor Green said: “I left school when I was 13, so my experience of Shakespeare was limited, but since starting this project, I’ve really taken to it. This has really taken me out of my comfort zone – we are all limited by our confidence and I was nervous in front of the students today. I hope that when they see me performing Shakespeare, they will be inspired to get up and do the same themselves.”

Meera Syal said: “There is a reason that Shakespeare’s work has lasted so long – he is the original popular soap writer, rap lyricist, rom com writer. You can even see a Shakespearean influence in Professor Green’s work. Once the students experience the RE:Shakespeare app and see Professor Green performing Much Ado About Nothing, their eyes will be opened to a completely different way of learning.”

Nicola Marsh, Vice Principal, Uxbridge High School, said: “My year 11 class were gobsmacked to see Professor Green and Meera Syal burst into their English lesson. To them, they are celebrities – people they read about – so to watch them both perform Shakespeare in their very own classroom was an incredible experience – in fact, it was much ado about something!”

The RE:Shakespeare app, developed by Samsung and the Royal Shakespeare Company, brings Shakespeare to life for students, inspiring a whole new generation to play, practice and perform the works of Shakespeare. With 64 million students studying Shakespeare’s plays globally, the aim of the app is to help students re-engage with, re-evaluate and re-interpret the Shakespeare texts they are reading, studying and performing.

The app is hosted by RSC alumnus David Tennant and sees interactive games and performance tutorials from artists including rapper Akala, beatboxing champion Shlomo and Shakespearean actor Tamsin Greig. A technology first for the RSC, RE:Shakespeare puts the Royal Shakespeare Company stage into 360 degrees, letting students explore the Stratford stage like never before from the palm of their hand. Another first for the RSC, the final stage of the app gives users the opportunity to put themselves literally into the play and perform alongside RSC actors in two different scenes from Much Ado About Nothing.

Andy Griffiths, President of Samsung Electronics UK & Ireland, said: “As we saw with the pupils at Uxbridge High School, we are excited to surprise every student who studies Shakespeare by bringing the greatest British playwright to life in a way that they have never seen before. It was brilliant to work with the Royal Shakespeare Company on the RE:Shakespeare app to provide an interactive tool for students and teachers alike, complementing the fantastic teaching in schools and making Shakespeare’s work even more relevant in today’s digital world.”

Catherine Mallyon, RSC Executive Director, said “Our work reaches over 530,000 students a year, transforming their experiences of Shakespeare in the classroom, in performance and online. We know that getting young people speaking Shakespeare’s words, bringing his work to life in the way that Meera and Professor Green do in the classroom, is the key to unlocking understanding and enjoyment. We hope young people everywhere are tempted to give the Re:Shakespeare app a go and put themselves in the centre of the action.”

RE:Shakespeare is free to download on Google Play. Download here.

This summer, a select group of high school juniors and seniors tackled these very challenges at the fourth annual Samsung Mobile App Academy – a five-day program that took place across the United States at these top-notch universities:

• University of Miami
• Rice University
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• University of California at Berkley
• Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
• University of Maryland

More than 1,100 students applied but only 60 were accepted for each of the six Academy sites where participants learned how to conceptualize, build and market apps that addressed a specific issue in one of four categories: health, education, environment, and community investment/sustainability. With the expansion of the program from three to five days, this year’s participants were challenged like never before – to create a fully functioning app from concept to completion.

That’s a huge accomplishment considering it can take weeks or even months to develop some of the sophisticated apps we use every day.

While many of these blooming app developers are high-performing students, they came to the Academy with varying degrees of coding expertise. But no matter their background, the program was carefully designed so that everyone had a valuable experience. So valuable that some students traveled as many as 120 miles round-trip, every day, for five days to attend the Academy during their summer vacation.

“I never felt left behind even though I had no previous experience with coding,” said Nicole, a 12^th grade student from New Jersey who had a change of heart regarding technology after her Mobile App Academy experience. “Majors that involve a lot of technology don’t seem uninteresting anymore.”

Aside from the technical and social aspects of the camp, building an app that addressed an issue with personal relevance to the students created another layer of satisfaction. Topics ranged from depression – a medical condition that people battle on a daily basis, to providing care for an elderly loved one with limited financial means, to water conservation as Californians battle one of the longest droughts in recent history. Through the Mobile App Academy, students were able to express what they find meaningful and leverage that to help improve the world using technology.

“The most valuable thing that I learned is my app can impact society and I have the power to change it through coding,” said Robin, a 12^th grade student from California. “I have been influenced to follow a computer science career.”

In February 2016, Samsung will award five Mobile App Academy winners up to $20,000 in scholarships for their mobile apps. With so many inventive and thoughtful ideas, narrowing it down to five won’t be easy, but the goal is for every student who attended this year’s Academy already feels like a winner for what they accomplished in just five short days.

As the world’s largest global technology company, we see it as our responsibility to foster students’ interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects along with instilling a sense of responsibility to use their talents to better the world. Mobile App Academy is just one of the many programs where we use Samsung technology to teach relatable STEM skills that can be applied to future careers. As software continues to play a critical role in our daily lives, any one of these young minds could create the next breakthrough in app development.

To learn more about the Samsung Mobile App Academy, please visit www.scholastic.com/samsungacademy/index.aspx.

The students experienced a wide variety of STEM activities, ranging from analyzing cave walls to determine past climate patterns to learning how to code mobile apps and exploring the relationship between technology and physical fitness. Many said they were exposed to fields of STEM they never knew existed and were excited about the possibility of exploring those fields in college.

While I had the pleasure of witnessing the students engage with the program on many levels, one thing that stood out to me was how these students expressed interest in things outside of the curriculum.

For instance, Denzel, who begins his freshman year at Trenton High School this fall, was very concerned about his career. He asked me lots of questions such as what I did for Samsung and how I got there, intrigued by the seven years I spent as a middle school teacher. But one of his questions that really stuck with me was: “Is it ok that I don’t know what I want to do with my career?”

I told him that he had plenty of time to figure that out and programs like Summer Science are important because they help students like him do just that. By exposing them to a wide variety of fields that are available for them to study, Samsung makes it a point to help young people explore opportunities they may not have had otherwise.

The program culminated in an awards luncheon at the end of the week where every student presented a storyboard of what they learned. All students were awarded a completion certificate with their families and program facilitators in attendance.

Samsung also awarded $2,500 scholarships to two college-bound alumni of the Summer Science: Talia Lawrence and Aliyah Jackson. Talia, who attended the program for two summers, will begin her freshman year at Saint Michaels College this fall to study biology. Aliyah, a three-year veteran of Summer Science, will begin college at Rowan University to study forensic science.

There is a great sense of pride in knowing that the place where I work makes possible such scholarships for students who have a passion for STEM. I look forward to many more opportunities to reward hard-working students through my role in Samsung’s Citizenship efforts.