May 2007 Blog Posts (12)

Finally read some of the discussions, and they all seem related to using technology in the classroom. Fair enough. Reenactors obviously are headed in the opposite direction, technologically speaking, back to using hand tools to recreate objects that are physically available to the public. Although amongst ourselves the use of the internet is the only way we could ever have met as Roman soldiers.

Most educators who create podcasts usually create them in one of two formats: audio-only or video. While these can be useful tools for a short lesson on Catullus 64 or for diagramming the first two lines of Cicero's First Catalinarian, the podcasts are usually a single track and can, at times, stretch to an hour or more. Not that there's anything wrong with that -- far from it. We have a number of members here who confess to jamming to their favorite podcast while taking their morning… Continue

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As eClassics gets more members, many teachers have related some interesting stories on their experiences with technology in the Classics classroom. I thought I'd back things up a little bit and provide some definitions of technology that is currently out there and being used, for better or worse, by your Classics colleagues and other educators.…

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David Brin is a science fiction author and futurist (as in science instead of Boccioni). While usually spot-on in his predictions, in an interview in the 2007 special "Invisible Planet" issue of Discover, Brin states that one of his more "disappointing" forecasts is that we have not experienced any rapid, "big advances in computerized teaching" (p. 66). Whether Brin means computer-aided instruction or computer-led instruction is unclear, but still,…

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For those of you who subscribe to the Latinteach discussion list, you have been treated to real eLearning in action in a high school Latin classroom, specifically Latin 3 (AP Catullus). The teacher is Robert Patrick (aka Magister Patricius), and his blog, Carmina Catulli, is used by his students to reflect on the Catullus poems presented in class, not only on the grammar, but going deeper into the…

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It happens to a lot of North Americans. We visit the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece, buy a DVD, and return home, pop it in the player for the ancient Greek class on Culture Friday and get an error message. Or, we purchase a hard-to-find Classics-themed DVD on-line from Europe and receive it only to discover that while the Region 2 DVD plays through our computers, it does not play in our Region 1 DVD player hooked up to telly. You've bought the DVD from a legitimate source…

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YouTube. You've probably noticed that there are always a couple of Classics-themed YouTube videos here to entertain you before you dig into the real meat of eLearning and language study. That's a fundamental issue with video hosting sites: quick bites of entertainment, advertising for bands, an archive for classic children's programming. Sites like YouTube are, however, also being used to host brief, educational how-to videos. Take for example a search…

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After a disappointing day yesterday of coming up nearly empty in search of electronic tools for Classicists (and Medievalists and their version of "Latin" ;) ), I spent the bulk of today talking to teachers and students, assessing what technology, if any, they were using for both class and research. I did come up with a few good leads and noticed a few trends. Overhead data projectors with their attendant PowerPoint presentations have surpassed the two-fisted slide projection MWF rituals in…

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After the first full day at Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, I am both amazed and befuddled. I took a few breaks from selling books to walk around the exhibition hall to talk to other people who were selling books. Of the dozens of vendors exhibiting at North America's largest conference on Medieval studies, only three had anything to do with technology: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers with its Artes Latinae self-teaching Latin software,…

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I spent a lot of time at the recent CAMWS conference speaking with anyone who would listen about potential applications of technology for learning ancient languages. While I did expect the older crowd to recoil in horror at the mention of computers and the younger crowd to fully embrace all things technical, I was pleasantly surprised that my stereotypes were wrong, even if they were somewhat right during the period of their genesis.

Instead, I found that the line was drawn between…

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Thanks for your interest in eLearning and the Classics. You've gotten this far (so THIS is the Internet, eh?), but now it's time to share your thoughts, ideas, stories (good or bad) on technology in the Classics classroom. This blog will be updated three times a week (more or less) with eLearning news and links that you can start implementing into your classes right away.



The attendant Forum (on the left) is open to anyone who wishes to start a topic or contribute to an active…

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