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Latinum Institute's Blog (186)

Latinum Podcast reaches its Millionth audio file download

Well, the unthinkable has happened, and the Latinum Podcast has just had its one millionth audio file download.

http://Latinum.mypodcast.com



This is all the more remarkable, as the Latinum podcast is not simply teaching Latin, but conversational Classical Latin.



Over time, I have responded to observations from users, and tweaked the presentation format. Users tell me that the current format is 'addictive'.



It is very simple:

Each lesson has three… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on April 4, 2008 at 8:38pm — No Comments

Trends in teaching Latin

It is always fascinating to hear of people talk about trends in teaching Latin - particularly when this is aimed at the idea of teaching Latin as a modern language would be taught. Adler's huge textbook for conversational spoken Latin was written in the mid 1800's - at over 700 pages of dense text in a small typeface. A more comprehensive book of conversational Classical Latin has yet to be written.



I have before me another remarkable trendy little book by WHS Jones, (1905) called… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on April 1, 2008 at 6:44pm — No Comments

"hybrid class" that incorporated instructional technology with in-class lectures scored a letter-grade higher on average

The following article caught my eye, as it fits in very much with the ethos of what elatin egreek is trying to achieve - the use of technology in support of lessons.



I teach one Jewish studies class, and obtained very high marks last year, by doing pretty much what is described in the article below: I kept a blog summarising each week's lesson. Student work was posted online on a website, so the students could see each other's work ( after it was due, of course), and I made a… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on March 29, 2008 at 7:19pm — No Comments

Latin Podcasting – An Exercise in Outreach This article outlines the origins of the ‘Latinum’ podcast, and its associated support websites, ‘Schola’ (A safe place to write in Latin), and ‘Imaginum V…

Latin Podcasting – An Exercise in Outreach



This article outlines the origins of the ‘Latinum’ podcast, and its associated support websites, ‘Schola’ (A safe place to write in Latin), and ‘Imaginum Vocabularium Latinum’ (A visual vocabulary).

Latinum originated in March 2007, with a few reading’s from Fenton’s “A Child’s First Latin Book’. At this stage, Google’s first scan of Georger Adler’s ‘lost’ textbook for Spoken Latin had not appeared on Google Books. This comprehensive… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on March 20, 2008 at 5:56am — No Comments

Schola

Schola, the Latin social site on ning that started up at the start of the month, is doing well - with now over 100 members, the quality of the discussion has improved, as there is now a core of active members with good standards of Latinity.



Every day, letters and notes fly back and forth in the public fora, and an unknown number of private messages are exchanged - these can be in any language - but the public forum only permits Latin.



I believe the success of Schola is… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on February 19, 2008 at 4:59am — No Comments

Latinum (again)

I made a little graph, plotting what has been happening with Latinum since I started the podcast in May 2007.







Downloads have steadily been rising, although they leveled off at 100 000 a month for a while, I'll be curious to see if the new level of 140 000 a month is the new plateau, or if it rises once again. I estimate there are around 6… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on February 7, 2008 at 5:02am — 1 Comment

Schola again

Well,
Schola certainly seems to have got off to a flying start - 48 hours later, many letters, comments and postings have been made, all in Latin. There are now 33 members.
My headache now is to translate the huge language file for the site into Latin - I've done 5% so far, enough to give the site a Latin feel.


Added by Latinum Institute on February 2, 2008 at 2:37pm — 3 Comments

SCHOLA

Cogito nos artem scribendi ediscimus.



Utcunque res est, errandum est nobis. Trepidus summus. Sed, scribendum est nobis Latine, in loco jucundus, loco qua nemo litteras emendat.



promulgo http://schola.ning.com/





Schola is a new 'safe' place to write in Latin. Only Latin is allowed,

no other language may be written.



You'll only get comments about your grammar on Schola from other users

if you ask for them. Commenting on other users' use of Latin is… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on January 30, 2008 at 11:44am — No Comments

ORBIS SENSUALIUM PICTUS

ORBIS SENSUALIUM PICTUS







As I cannot work on Latinum at the moment, due to my recent septum

operation, and further, due to being in post -operative quarantine

-housebound but not bedbound - I have ****lots***** of time on my hands.







I have started to add the very useful work of Comenius
ORBIS SENSUALIUM PICTUS to the Imaginum Vocabularium, using the original… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on January 27, 2008 at 5:08pm — 4 Comments

Imaginum Vocabularium Latinum

During one of my more recent forays into the wildly growing forest that is Google books, I tripped over the roots of something interesting - William's Vocabulary for Speaking Latin "composed for the amusement of his son" (ha ha), and published in 1828.





Download The_Latin_Vocabulary Williams Speaking.pdf





As Williams was amused in the writing of it, so have I been in the… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on January 7, 2008 at 4:32am — No Comments

Latinum half millionth download approaches

The Latinum Podcast http://latinum.mypodcast.com is almost at its half millionth download, as I write this, a number of downloads I certainly never expected to see. There is now a steady 100 000 downloads per month. Users are scattered all over the world - Australia, Korea, Vietnam, New Zealand, and of course, Europe and the Americas. There are over 1 000 regular down loaders of the lessons and recordings, and around 15 to 20 new users find their way to the podcast every day.



Of late,… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on December 10, 2007 at 12:22pm — 1 Comment

Latin Compositions

I was looking around online to see if I could find any Latin creative writing written by contemporary writers...I was aware of the poetry page run by Suberic, however, I was looking for prose - short stories and the like.

I have not found anything. A couple of blogs here and there, but no literature as such.

I don't mean academic writing. I mean creative writing.



I know Laura Gibbs encourages her students to write compositions. Maybe, Laura, you even have a few hanging… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on December 4, 2007 at 3:36pm — 1 Comment

Latin in the Science Classroom

Today I taught two introductory science classes, where I approached the subject linguistically.



Firstly, I drew a nut on the board, labelled the shell, as shell, and the kernel, as kernel. This was a chemistry into class, so I labelled the kernel as the nucleus.



I then drew a model of an atom, and labelled it the same way, explaining that the shell of an atom was a place, not a thing.



In my intro Bio class today I drew exactly the same nut, but I wrote skin/shell,… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on September 11, 2007 at 1:53pm — No Comments

Implementing Latin text messaging as a pedagogical tool

Implementing Latin text messaging as a pedagogical tool



Version 1.3

______________________________________________



SMS messaging using the predictive text

input of the T9 dictionary that exists on many models of cell phone/mobile

phone has the potential to be a very

powerful learning tool:



Writing words out into the mobile phone has the advantage of not being mindless repetition for…

Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on August 26, 2007 at 7:55am — No Comments

A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO THE READING OF LATIN PROSE AND POETRY.

This article is intended for use as a student handout. Please feel free to reproduce it.

____________________________________________







A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO THE READING OF LATIN PROSE AND…

Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on August 23, 2007 at 7:03pm — 1 Comment

It never rains , it pours.

Two Classical Greek podcasts start up in the same week:



Seumas Macdonald in Australia and I have both started recording podcasts using the Greek Ollendorff , which teaches Classical Greek through the progressive question-answer format invented by Jean Manesca, and popularized by Ollendorff.



: As you may know, I run a small suite of sites using Ollendorff's textbooks:… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on August 23, 2007 at 4:43am — No Comments

History of "Modern Language" Latin teaching.

I've been doing some research into the development of the idea of

teaching the classical languages using modern intuitive methods.



An early 'modern method' teacher, called Jean Manesca, appears to have written the first fully

developed modern language course in the early 1820's - designed for

French, he was keen to see it adopted for the classics, and actively

promoted the idea. His "Oral system of teaching Living Languages Illustrated by a Practical Course of… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on August 14, 2007 at 5:36pm — 3 Comments

Working Hard

Still working hard on the podcasts. I've re-jigged most of the images for Latinum, giving the site a new look. I've used my photos from Berlin and Potsdam, for the most part.



While looking for material to make a Latin-French version of the Latinum podcast, I came across a book by Jean Manesca, which apparently served as the model for Ollendorff. Manesca's appears to have been the first 'intuitive' language course written - the grand-daddy of them all. Ollendorff follows Manesca very… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on August 14, 2007 at 6:26am — No Comments

podcast update - technology

I've just returned from a vacation in Berlin and Potsdam. Lots of neoclassical and baroque architecture....

Today I went to Turnkey on the Charing Cross Road, and bought a new usb microphone to record my podcast with - a Samson C01U - a big clunky thing.



I recorded a couple of episodes, and then realised things were not quite right - after a few hours of messing around trying to get things right, I resorted to google and found the answer I needed on the Audacity pages on… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on August 7, 2007 at 9:55pm — No Comments

more on text/audio interference.

Hi Jeltzz,

Thank you for your comment below.



I think you're pretty much right, and this approach would suit quite a few students. I think having the text available is important for many learners - epsecially for new vocabulary, maybe for pre-audio, or post-audio study or review, but not together at the same time, as you suggest works for yourself.

I also think that the language gets into your head better without exposure to too much text. You need the language to read ther… Continue

Added by Latinum Institute on August 7, 2007 at 4:06am — No Comments

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