Various Tech and Web Resources for Latin and Greek Teaching:
(In no particular order, yet; current version for UT Classics AI Orientation, August 2015)
USEFUL INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES:
Student Response Systems
There are a number of these, but iClicker is the most common (especially at UT). While these are generally used in large lecture classrooms, they can play various roles in smaller, language classrooms. All student response systems (even low-tech options like colored strips of paper) allow you to keep students more engaged and to gauge how well the majority of the students (and not just the very vocal ones) understand the material. Electronic systems like the iClicker add a degree of public anonymity to the students' responses, a feature that often pulls out more honest responses to polls and opinion questions and even helps the students feel more comfortable sharing afterward when they realize they were not the only ones who don't understand or are overly frustrated by a concept.
the Doc Cam
I use the Doc Cam in my class almost every day. I use it to project a "clean" copy of the text for the students to read and translate from, allowing them to avoid the temptation of looking down at their annotated texts or (gasp!) fully written-out translations. You can also use it to project short quizzes, worksheets, or other documents that you will fill out and work through as a class. You can thereby model visually in real time how to approach a difficult question or passage.
Google Calendar
Create a group Google calendar and post important dates for assignments, reviews, and exams with built-in reminders to keep your students aware of the goings-on for your course. Some Course Management Systems (CMS) also have built-in calendar programs, but these may require the students to opt-in to that feature, so check out what is available with your CMS and plan accordingly.
Google Docs, etc.
Google Docs (and other of their web-based document programs) can be used for a number of activities. A Google Doc (*linkable to CMS and/or QR code) can be a handy and efficient way to keep track of assignments for students. Students can complete online translation activities (esp. English-to-Latin) together on a shared document. They could also communally prepare any sort of presentation for the class.
Powerpoint or Prezi
This may seem a bit obvious, but I find it useful to point out what these types of presentation software can do beyond their most basic use as a means for content delivery (most often for large lecture courses). In smaller, language classrooms, presentation software such as Powerpoint or Prezi allows you to create classroom activities that require little or no setup time. Teaching a tough syntactical concept? Include practice sentences on a slide with the Latin or Greek examples first, give the students some time to translate them (on their own or in groups), and then have an accurate English translation appear. Teaching or reviewing morphology? Build short self-quizzes with empty paradigms that fill in automatically as you advance the slide after the students have had a chance to work on it on their for a few minutes. Similarly, you can build presentations to share with the students that allow them to test themselves at home with that same functionality (i.e., test themselves and then self-check as the correct answers appear). Use this software to facilitate and jazz up your usual student-centered activities. Difficult passages or overly long periods can be graphed and diagrammed to help the students better visualize the syntax.
Audio Recordings, Podcasts, or Lecture Capture
Whether it is for in-class presentations or extra information that you couldn't fit into a given day of the course, there are many ways to record and publish audio and video files for your students. Powerpoint has a simple "Record Audio" feature that may do the trick for you or check to see your institution may have access to more powerful lecture capture tools. I someday plan to record all the blurbs that I like to give for the vocab entries of each chapter of Wheelock that provide useful etymological information for each word. These presentations tend to include useful facts about Latin word formation, but often take up too much class time to complete for every chapter. Once I have these mini-lectures recorded, I can post them for the students to view or listen to on their own time. (VoiceThread or Audacity may work for this purpose, but I have yet to try these out personally).
Discussion Board Posts, Blogs, or Wikis
Most Course Management Systems or even Weebly (see below) provide the ability to create discussion boards or other public forums for the students to post thoughts, opinions, or various types of assignments. Blogs allow the students to create individual written assignments and Wikis are best for collaborative group efforts. These and the basic discussion board foster a digital conversation on any given topic, but they can also be used to allow the students to practice Latin or Greek composition outside of the classroom, where time is valuable enough that comp exercises are often given short shrift. When teaching Result Clauses, for example, I have students practice writing Tua Mater/Tuus Pater Jokes as a class activity and then post the results on the discussion board for correction or critique. They usually find the exercise both enjoyable and edifying! Sometimes this activity continues digitally long after it has served its purpose in class.
QR Codes
After you produce all of this amazing online information, make sure that the students have easy access to it. Unfortunately, as you probably know well, students often need to have available to them the shortest possible route to encourage them to utilize the tools that their instructors offer. For today's web-centric, smart-device-toting student, that shortest possible route includes a QR code. These are actually very easy to make: visit one of a number of QR code generators (QRStuff, e.g.) and insert the link to your online materials. If you distribute a study guide or review worksheet and make an answer key for the students, post the key online (saving paper) and include at the bottom of the original a QR code to the website where you have posted the key (like this one, for example). Distribute bookmarks on the first day of class with your name, email, office hours, and a QR code of the course website or your personal site.
USEFUL WEBSITES AND APPS:
Weebly
Weebly allows you to build and publish your own site for free! It's an easy, quick way to post materials for your class online and create various kinds of space on the web for your course. Its WYSIWYG editor system makes it possible for anyone to create a website. Even if you have access to a traditional course management system (Canvas, Blackboard, etc.), Weebly can still be of benefit to you as a venue for organizing your materials as suits your needs and as a permanent space that won't need to be rebuilt or transferred each semester. You control your page. Note, however, that there are limitations on what you can post as your site is not secured, so be careful not to violate FERPA or copyright law in any way. (You can, however, password protect pages of your site if you upgrade to a premium account).
Sporcle
You may be familiar with Sporcle as a place to waste time with frivolous user-submitted quizzes, but it can also serve as a useful classroom tool. There are many classically-themed quizzes (for both language and civ courses) already on the site to which you can refer the students. Use this quiz to help your students learn the Greek alphabet by transliterating various names they might know; or this quiz to see which characters from the Aeneid they can remember. Better yet, you can have your students (alone or in groups) create quizzes as an in-class or homework activity. After they share the links to the quizzes, they can then try to stump their classmates or the rest of the web!
Anki
While there are many websites, apps, and programs that allow you to create digital flashcards (Quizlet, FlashcardMachine, e.g.), Anki is the best of the bunch in my opinion. While much of the benefit of "using" flashcards comes from the physical act of writing them out by hand, digital flashcards, when used properly, can offer many benefits over traditional hand-written cards. To use Anki, you will have to download the program (free for PC, Mac, or Linux) or App (free for Android; $24.99 for iOS mobile devices), but you will find its functionality meets almost every demand that you can place on a digital flashcard system. Cards can be labeled with multiple tags to allow students to organize words into morphological or semantic groups or by chapter of your textbook ("first declension noun," "Agricultural Word," "Wheelock Chapter 2", and "first declension masculine noun" could all be tags that are used for agricola, for example). As students review the cards, they select how comfortable they are with the word to determine how often it will circulate back through the "stack" (immediately, 10 minutes, or 4 days are the default options, though they can be adjusted).
Wordle
Wordle allows you to generate word maps to display the vocabulary of a given passage, text, or chapter of your textbook. The automatic image generator will organize the words randomly, but will size them according to the frequency of their appearance in the text. Check out this Wordle I made for Caesar's BC 3 to give you an idea of what Wordle can do. I used this as a prompt for a short essay quiz in my Intermediate Latin class and was really pleased with the points that the students were able to draw from this simple image. The downsides to Wordle: you will need to install and approve the Java Applet for your browser and saving the image of the Wordle for external use is a little wonky (not due to copyright restrictions, just due to the program's function).
Perseus
While everyone in Classics knows this site as the home of the Look-up Tool that creates bad habits by short cutting your efforts and preventing you from really internalizing Latin and Greek morphology, the site is extremely useful when used with the right intentions. Use the site's Vocabulary Tool to quickly build word lists generated by frequency or the Reference Tool to get quick access to large reference works already in the public domain. Don't forget, too, that the Look-up Tool does give you free access to full LSJ and Lewis & Short entries, just be sure to avoid the tool's potential pitfalls! Most students will have heard about Perseus by the end of their intermediate language classes, so you are not doing them a favor if you avoid talking about it for fear of opening Pandora's box. The students who really care about learning these languages well will be best served by their instructors making them aware of the potential problems, while the ones who don't care probably know about it long before you think to bring it up.
Orbis
Stanford's incredible Geospatial Network Model, developed by Scheidel and Meeks, has many applications in the classroom. Use it pique the students' curiosity in the way travel and shipping worked in the Roman world or to supplement a discussion of maritime trade and commerce. Caesar courses I have taught in the past found it useful to help them visualize the routes marched and sailed by Caesar's troops and navies or to compare Caesar's description of the haste of his forced-march advance with other means of travel. Similarly, never hesitate to make use of the beautiful maps in the Barrington Atlas, now available via a reasonably priced iOS app.
Teacher Kit
Teacher Kit is a useful iOS, Android, and Windows 8 App that is useful for recording classroom attendance, among other things. You can set up the classroom to visually mirror your own classroom (i.e., position students' "desks" based on where they usually sit in the classroom) for ease of taking attendance. While it also has grade recording capabilities, I've never been comfortable using that feature, so I cannot speak as to its uses.
UT Instructors: Note that the Center for Teaching and Learning offers valuable assistance to help instructors enhance their teaching methods with various tools. Their website has helpful information and you can also meet directly with CTL staff to discuss your needs and to make your ideas come to life.
(In no particular order, yet; current version for UT Classics AI Orientation, August 2015)
USEFUL INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES:
Student Response Systems
There are a number of these, but iClicker is the most common (especially at UT). While these are generally used in large lecture classrooms, they can play various roles in smaller, language classrooms. All student response systems (even low-tech options like colored strips of paper) allow you to keep students more engaged and to gauge how well the majority of the students (and not just the very vocal ones) understand the material. Electronic systems like the iClicker add a degree of public anonymity to the students' responses, a feature that often pulls out more honest responses to polls and opinion questions and even helps the students feel more comfortable sharing afterward when they realize they were not the only ones who don't understand or are overly frustrated by a concept.
the Doc Cam
I use the Doc Cam in my class almost every day. I use it to project a "clean" copy of the text for the students to read and translate from, allowing them to avoid the temptation of looking down at their annotated texts or (gasp!) fully written-out translations. You can also use it to project short quizzes, worksheets, or other documents that you will fill out and work through as a class. You can thereby model visually in real time how to approach a difficult question or passage.
Google Calendar
Create a group Google calendar and post important dates for assignments, reviews, and exams with built-in reminders to keep your students aware of the goings-on for your course. Some Course Management Systems (CMS) also have built-in calendar programs, but these may require the students to opt-in to that feature, so check out what is available with your CMS and plan accordingly.
Google Docs, etc.
Google Docs (and other of their web-based document programs) can be used for a number of activities. A Google Doc (*linkable to CMS and/or QR code) can be a handy and efficient way to keep track of assignments for students. Students can complete online translation activities (esp. English-to-Latin) together on a shared document. They could also communally prepare any sort of presentation for the class.
Powerpoint or Prezi
This may seem a bit obvious, but I find it useful to point out what these types of presentation software can do beyond their most basic use as a means for content delivery (most often for large lecture courses). In smaller, language classrooms, presentation software such as Powerpoint or Prezi allows you to create classroom activities that require little or no setup time. Teaching a tough syntactical concept? Include practice sentences on a slide with the Latin or Greek examples first, give the students some time to translate them (on their own or in groups), and then have an accurate English translation appear. Teaching or reviewing morphology? Build short self-quizzes with empty paradigms that fill in automatically as you advance the slide after the students have had a chance to work on it on their for a few minutes. Similarly, you can build presentations to share with the students that allow them to test themselves at home with that same functionality (i.e., test themselves and then self-check as the correct answers appear). Use this software to facilitate and jazz up your usual student-centered activities. Difficult passages or overly long periods can be graphed and diagrammed to help the students better visualize the syntax.
Audio Recordings, Podcasts, or Lecture Capture
Whether it is for in-class presentations or extra information that you couldn't fit into a given day of the course, there are many ways to record and publish audio and video files for your students. Powerpoint has a simple "Record Audio" feature that may do the trick for you or check to see your institution may have access to more powerful lecture capture tools. I someday plan to record all the blurbs that I like to give for the vocab entries of each chapter of Wheelock that provide useful etymological information for each word. These presentations tend to include useful facts about Latin word formation, but often take up too much class time to complete for every chapter. Once I have these mini-lectures recorded, I can post them for the students to view or listen to on their own time. (VoiceThread or Audacity may work for this purpose, but I have yet to try these out personally).
Discussion Board Posts, Blogs, or Wikis
Most Course Management Systems or even Weebly (see below) provide the ability to create discussion boards or other public forums for the students to post thoughts, opinions, or various types of assignments. Blogs allow the students to create individual written assignments and Wikis are best for collaborative group efforts. These and the basic discussion board foster a digital conversation on any given topic, but they can also be used to allow the students to practice Latin or Greek composition outside of the classroom, where time is valuable enough that comp exercises are often given short shrift. When teaching Result Clauses, for example, I have students practice writing Tua Mater/Tuus Pater Jokes as a class activity and then post the results on the discussion board for correction or critique. They usually find the exercise both enjoyable and edifying! Sometimes this activity continues digitally long after it has served its purpose in class.
QR Codes
After you produce all of this amazing online information, make sure that the students have easy access to it. Unfortunately, as you probably know well, students often need to have available to them the shortest possible route to encourage them to utilize the tools that their instructors offer. For today's web-centric, smart-device-toting student, that shortest possible route includes a QR code. These are actually very easy to make: visit one of a number of QR code generators (QRStuff, e.g.) and insert the link to your online materials. If you distribute a study guide or review worksheet and make an answer key for the students, post the key online (saving paper) and include at the bottom of the original a QR code to the website where you have posted the key (like this one, for example). Distribute bookmarks on the first day of class with your name, email, office hours, and a QR code of the course website or your personal site.
USEFUL WEBSITES AND APPS:
Weebly
Weebly allows you to build and publish your own site for free! It's an easy, quick way to post materials for your class online and create various kinds of space on the web for your course. Its WYSIWYG editor system makes it possible for anyone to create a website. Even if you have access to a traditional course management system (Canvas, Blackboard, etc.), Weebly can still be of benefit to you as a venue for organizing your materials as suits your needs and as a permanent space that won't need to be rebuilt or transferred each semester. You control your page. Note, however, that there are limitations on what you can post as your site is not secured, so be careful not to violate FERPA or copyright law in any way. (You can, however, password protect pages of your site if you upgrade to a premium account).
Sporcle
You may be familiar with Sporcle as a place to waste time with frivolous user-submitted quizzes, but it can also serve as a useful classroom tool. There are many classically-themed quizzes (for both language and civ courses) already on the site to which you can refer the students. Use this quiz to help your students learn the Greek alphabet by transliterating various names they might know; or this quiz to see which characters from the Aeneid they can remember. Better yet, you can have your students (alone or in groups) create quizzes as an in-class or homework activity. After they share the links to the quizzes, they can then try to stump their classmates or the rest of the web!
Anki
While there are many websites, apps, and programs that allow you to create digital flashcards (Quizlet, FlashcardMachine, e.g.), Anki is the best of the bunch in my opinion. While much of the benefit of "using" flashcards comes from the physical act of writing them out by hand, digital flashcards, when used properly, can offer many benefits over traditional hand-written cards. To use Anki, you will have to download the program (free for PC, Mac, or Linux) or App (free for Android; $24.99 for iOS mobile devices), but you will find its functionality meets almost every demand that you can place on a digital flashcard system. Cards can be labeled with multiple tags to allow students to organize words into morphological or semantic groups or by chapter of your textbook ("first declension noun," "Agricultural Word," "Wheelock Chapter 2", and "first declension masculine noun" could all be tags that are used for agricola, for example). As students review the cards, they select how comfortable they are with the word to determine how often it will circulate back through the "stack" (immediately, 10 minutes, or 4 days are the default options, though they can be adjusted).
Wordle
Wordle allows you to generate word maps to display the vocabulary of a given passage, text, or chapter of your textbook. The automatic image generator will organize the words randomly, but will size them according to the frequency of their appearance in the text. Check out this Wordle I made for Caesar's BC 3 to give you an idea of what Wordle can do. I used this as a prompt for a short essay quiz in my Intermediate Latin class and was really pleased with the points that the students were able to draw from this simple image. The downsides to Wordle: you will need to install and approve the Java Applet for your browser and saving the image of the Wordle for external use is a little wonky (not due to copyright restrictions, just due to the program's function).
Perseus
While everyone in Classics knows this site as the home of the Look-up Tool that creates bad habits by short cutting your efforts and preventing you from really internalizing Latin and Greek morphology, the site is extremely useful when used with the right intentions. Use the site's Vocabulary Tool to quickly build word lists generated by frequency or the Reference Tool to get quick access to large reference works already in the public domain. Don't forget, too, that the Look-up Tool does give you free access to full LSJ and Lewis & Short entries, just be sure to avoid the tool's potential pitfalls! Most students will have heard about Perseus by the end of their intermediate language classes, so you are not doing them a favor if you avoid talking about it for fear of opening Pandora's box. The students who really care about learning these languages well will be best served by their instructors making them aware of the potential problems, while the ones who don't care probably know about it long before you think to bring it up.
Orbis
Stanford's incredible Geospatial Network Model, developed by Scheidel and Meeks, has many applications in the classroom. Use it pique the students' curiosity in the way travel and shipping worked in the Roman world or to supplement a discussion of maritime trade and commerce. Caesar courses I have taught in the past found it useful to help them visualize the routes marched and sailed by Caesar's troops and navies or to compare Caesar's description of the haste of his forced-march advance with other means of travel. Similarly, never hesitate to make use of the beautiful maps in the Barrington Atlas, now available via a reasonably priced iOS app.
Teacher Kit
Teacher Kit is a useful iOS, Android, and Windows 8 App that is useful for recording classroom attendance, among other things. You can set up the classroom to visually mirror your own classroom (i.e., position students' "desks" based on where they usually sit in the classroom) for ease of taking attendance. While it also has grade recording capabilities, I've never been comfortable using that feature, so I cannot speak as to its uses.
UT Instructors: Note that the Center for Teaching and Learning offers valuable assistance to help instructors enhance their teaching methods with various tools. Their website has helpful information and you can also meet directly with CTL staff to discuss your needs and to make your ideas come to life.