Andrew Reinhard's Blog – June 2007 Archive (10)

Today I had the distinct pleasure of giving my first ACL workshop: "Digital Demosthenes: New Pedagogy for Old Languages". My presider was Justin Schwamm who spent about thirty minutes talking about SMART Boards and SMART Airliners. My discussion on tech in the Classics classroom took a catholic approach (pun intended) on evaluating new and… Continue

I spoke with about a dozen people today on "digital pedagogy" and learned that it is alive and well, but mostly in the form of data projectors and SMART Boards. One delegate says she uses "everything" when it comes to technology in the classroom, while others complain that it's a money thing when trying to acquire hardware. Money is indeed a huge issue when it comes to schools and districts applying for technology in the classroom, but perhaps the biggest issue is the standardization and… Continue

Things were so busy at ACL yesterday that it's only been now that I have found the time to blog on eClassics about what's been happening here. As a colleague said to me once, "sleep is a conspiracy". I wanted to take the temperature of high school and college Latin/Greek teachers and how they are currently using technology and spoke to dozens of people (including several eClassics members) about it. And the news is good!



Many, many people are using overhead data projectors in their… Continue

On June 23, 2007, I had the opportunity to be one of nine American delegates (and sole Classicist) to the first annual Second Life Language Teaching Colloquium (SLanguages 2007). Sponsored by the

Consultants-E, a UK-based eLearning company, the conference was held on the

Second Life island of

EduNation. …





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One of Dr. Jayni Reinhard's (University of Wisconsin - Parkside) favorite language-learning activities as a grad student at the University of Minnesota was reading Greek off of high-quality images of papyrus fragments. A group project introduced students to paleography and served as a much-needed and welcome reminder that the texts from ancient authors were not as neat and tidy as students might sometimes think. Poems were… Continue

For those of you who are interested in teaching yourself Latin, are homeschoolers, have several sections of Latin in one classroom at the same time and are wondering what to have your Latin I kids do while you translate Catullus 63 with your Latin IVs, or have always wanted your Ubuntu Linux box to talk back to you in Restored Classical Latin, Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers has just released Artes Latinae v2.0. Dr. Waldo Sweet's program of Latin study has been updated with a new interface and can… Continue

A couple of our members who teach Latin mentioned to me that they are using Wimba Voice Tools to modernize the language lab component of their classes. While I am not intended this post to be a sales pitch, after reviewing the site and speaking to folks who have used Voice Tools for their classes, Wimba seems to be on the right track in getting modern technology into the hands of language teachers to facilitate the oral and aural… Continue

I had the wonderful opportunity to meet and chat with a 21-year-old Greek college student attending university in Athens. The trick was that we met on-line in Second Life. As some of you know, there are virtual environments here that reproduce real-world features (like Rome). In this case, we met in virtual Hellas, a reproduction of a modern Greek beachtown complete with seaside, cafes, ruins, shops, and more. If you have Second Life on your computer, click… Continue

Emily Silverman tuaght Latin at William Penn

Charter School, in Philadelphia, for the 2006-7 school year. One of her classes created a rather dynamic site on Wordpress focusing on Vergil's Aeneid with links to blogs of many of the personnae in the epic. Her current students are in love with the project, and past students wish they would have had a project like this when they were enrolled (how… Continue

While Latin does seem to get the lion's share of attention in both real and virtual worlds, it's important to note that many resources for the study of ancient Greek are freely available on-line. Below are links to PDF handouts for students and teachers of ancient Greek prepared for all levels of study:



The University of Edinburgh Department of Classics homepage has links to its individual Greek classes, the… Continue