iPodi Lateiactum

I have been listening to The History of Rome podcast for over a year now. As a Classicist, I've learned some Roman history in formal classroom settings, but I've found that listening to this podcast has really strengthened my understanding in ways that regular lectures may not. First of all, it's been produced (nearly) every week for at least two years. The constant reinforcement over such a long time allows for both breadth and depth of information retention. I myself am an aural learner, love to learn through listening and storytelling. Things I read in print or on the screen can slip out of my head but something expressed with a human voice stays with me. This podcast has really been a significant part of my education.

Which is why I was ecstatic to see this week that The History of Rome has been nominated for a Best Educational Podcast of 2010 at PodCastAwards.com Maybe some of my classmates and readers will see some of their favorite podcasts nominated as well. If you don't, then perhaps you'll consider voting for The History of Rome; trust me, this podcaster deserves to be recognized for his outstanding work and dedication.

Since I first began listening, I realized there was pedagogical potential to this podcast. Although the podcaster is not a historian or Classicist by trade, nothing he says has conflicted with what I've learned from professionals in the field. If he should make a mistake, listeners will leave a comment and he will make a correction in his next episode. So I consider him to be a reliable source of information, especially if you continue to listen every week in case of corrections, if you're first acquainting yourself with Roman history and culture (i.e. maybe it's not a good source for you doctoral thesis), and if you're learning about Rome from other sources too.

While I could see the podcast as a whole being a part of my curriculum, one episode stands out as a good example of a stand alone resource.
Every once in a while, Mr. The History of Rome takes a break from the chronological procession of events in ancient Rome and explores a social/cultural topic. The last episode he uploaded before a break for his own wedding and honeymoon was A History of Rome Wedding which you can hear yourself at this link.
When I first heard this episode, I had just caught up with the podcast and so was hearing it as the podcaster was about to get married. He refers to his own wedding preparations and plans in the episode and connects them to Roman traditions. It's always fascinating to realize that we do things as the Romans did; we wear wedding rings, white dresses and veils, get married in June, eat wedding cake, etc. As he puts it: "Weddings are a confusing amalgam of emotion, tradition and bureaucratic legalese. If that doesn't sound like the Romans, well, I don't know what does."

I also enjoy his inclusion of his own wedding practices because it reminds us that when we're learning online, or anywhere, that the people we're learning from are real people with their own personal concerns and life events. The History of Rome listeners are a great community to be a part of, and so many people shared their congratulations and well wishes to one of their favorite podcasters that week.
I think for students, moments like these might remind them that it's just everyday people who are passionate about ancient history and culture, that in addition to the mundane affairs they also devote themselves to learning and sharing what they learn. We're reminded us that we can all be lifelong learners and that we can share our creativity with supportive learning communities.

Communicatio Collaboratioque cum Securitate

ePals is a website that helps for teachers and students to connect with other teachers and students from around the world. It is a secure website that allows teachers to monitor conversations and make sure that they are appropriate. However, this isn't merely a social network. ePals also provides structured curricula with help from its partners like National Geographic. I think that this is one of the most attractive elements of the site. Yes, communicating with students and teachers from around the world can be a learning experience in itself. However, I think that without structured learning activities, it would be hard to move away from purely socializing into active student-centered learning.

Exploring the site for myself, it seems that many participants are focused on modern cultural concerns and social issues. This makes sense to me. While learning about chemistry, or math, or grammar, with students from around the world could be very exciting, these subjects don't have such an integral component of global connection and cooperation.

And I do think that what we can learn in a Latin class is relevant to modern social concerns. By learning about the Roman people, who are separated from us by time and distance, we can see the broad spectrum of human experiences and how some concerns have been with us for millenia. The slave economy of Rome connects to human trafficking and exploitation of workers today. We can better understand the struggles for the rights of women and LGBT identified people when we can see the place in society they held in Roman times. The impact climate and climate change have on politics and economics are timeless phenomenon that I think can be studied in a course on current events or a course on Latin.
However, I think that without a foundation in the basic facts of Roman history and culture, it's hard to begin to explore the deeper questions and connections. Based on just a beginning exploration of ePals, it seems like this kind of content is not its primary focus.

And yet, quick search for languages showed that there are Latin classes looking to collaborate. Some are ready to communicate in Latin as well as work on projects about Roman history and culture. Both Europe and the US have been influenced by Roman culture and it would be exciting for students to compare the different ways this influence manifests itself in every day things we take for granted, like architecture and celebrations.

As with any website, it's what you make of it. I can see myself connecting and collaborating with these Latin classrooms across the country and around the world. Even if the site isn't geared towards Classics specifically, simply having a social network devoted to structured and secure learning would be a great benefit.

Chartae

Big Huge Labs is a website offering all sorts of free tools to manipulate images either from your own computer or a Flickr account. I can see myself making calendars, jigsaw puzzles, mosaics and slide shows in my own classroom. But the first tool that caught my eye was the trading card maker.

I once observed a middle school Latin class learning about the major gods and goddesses by playing a modified Pokemon. They created cards for six different gods and goddesses and wrote down their attributes and key facts about them. I don't remember the point system exactly, but I believe they had 30 points total and could distribute those points among their six cards any way they wanted. To play the game, each student found a partner. The students would pick a card to play and each read the information from their card to their opponent. Then, they would take turns with dice (how very Roman; Romans loved to gamble with dice, or aleae). Whoever had the lower roll, would subtract however many points they lost by from their card. When one person lost all their points, they took their opponents card and now had strengthened their deck for their next round.

These kids were having a great time! They drew and designed their cards themselves. However, using Big Huge Labs and a Flickr account they could create cards that look more like commercial ones.

Here's a card I created using an image of a statue of Minerva I found on Flickr. Students could learn some art history if they find photographs (and attribute them to the artist) famous statues or paintings of the gods and goddesses. They could also use their own photographs or pictures they created themselves.

This game might also work if students were learning about the major players in the Roman civil wars.

Vikipaedia

Our class has just finished working on our wiki projects, and is moving on to a discussion of copyright and licensing. This article in the NY Times Sunday Magazine seems very appropriate

Prize Descriptions

The author delves into the Wikipedia's policies on authorship, the culture of Wikipedia contributors, and also praises Wikipedia as the best source for explanations of new internet phenomena, video games, web tools, and technologies.

I, and I'm sure many of you, use Wikipedia regularly for quick references to all sorts of things. Students certainly are. I think it behooves to understand the strengths and weaknesses and creative processes behind this resource.

Coruscans

Photo by Ian W. Scott

Can you imagine this being the wall of your dining room? I can, and do, but only when I think of what I'd do if I won the lottery.

This wall painting came from the House of Livia in Rome, the murals of which are now housed in the National Museum of Rome, Palazzo Massimo. This photograph was taken by Ian W. Scott and I was able to find this at Flickr.com

Photo by Ian W. Scott

Here's a close-up of the same wall so you can see the beautiful detail that goes into Roman wall painting, also taken by Ian W. Scott.

Before this week, if I wanted to use an image in a presentation for students or in a blog, I would probably go to Google Images, take whatever I could get (I was usually disappointed when looking for something specific), and then use it without knowing where it had come from and being unable to attribute any kind of credit.

I wasn't modeling very good behavior for students. In the classroom, students need to learn to give credit for the creative efforts of others. It's fair to the creators and, it also helps teachers to recognize students' own original work and creativity.

Fortunately for those of us who are taking advantage of the Read/Write web and want our students to do so too, there is a resource helping us find images (and other creative works too) and use them in a way that is fair to the original creator.

Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation who provide free licenses, consistent with rules of copyright, to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry. They are creating a middle ground between "all rights reserved" full copyrighting, when works can't be used or remixed at all, and public domain, when works can be used in any way without any recognition of the artist.

Creative Commons offers six different kinds of license to meet creators various needs.




1. Attribution: the work can be used, distributed, remixed, reworked, for commercial or non-commercial use as long as credit is attributed to the original creator.




2. Attribution Share Alike: the work can be used, distributed, remixed, reworked, for commercial or non-commercial use as long as credit is attributed to the original creator. Any derivative work created from the original must also have an Attribution Share Alike license (so the cycle of creativity can continue).




3. Attribution No Derivatives: work can be used commercially or non-commercially as long as credit is attributed and the work remains unchanged.




4. Attribution Non-Commercial: Remixing and reworking are both allowed. New works must acknowledge the original creator and be non-commercial. Those who've used the original work don't have to license their derivative works on the same terms.




5. Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike: Others can remix and rework the original non-commercially as long as credit is given. All new work based on the original will also carry the same license (so all derivatives are also non-commercial).




6. Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives: Work cannot be changed or used commercially in any way. Can be used non commercially if credit is given to creator (sometimes called the "free advertising " license).

For example, both the images I've used have the Attribution Share Alike license. This means I can use them if I attribute the images to Ian W. Scott, I can change the image (maybe add captions showing all the different kinds of flowers and their symbolic significance), use the image in another work (a presentation perhaps), and even sell that other work, but I would have to license my new creation with an Attribution Share Alike license.

I've very pleased to have found a way not only to find great images, but also to share them fairly.

Lector Gugeliense

In finding a Latin title for my post, I was reminded of how the Latin words for "read" and "choice" can look so similar. A "lector" is a reader, as in the English word for someone who reads at a church service, but a "lectus" is something chosen, like our word election.
This goes straight to the heart of using a Google Reader; it's a new tool for making choices about what to read on the web.

Just wanted take a moment to share how setting up a Google Reader was fun if only because I somehow managed to out-tech a very tech savvy friend of mine. We had a good laugh about how the reader of dead languages learned a new web tool before the software engineer had even heard of it.

What the Google Reader did was create a page where the blogs, columnists, and websites I follow are all updated in one place. Instead of me going out into the web, the web comes to me. It's a little overwhelming and easy to be inundated. However, I think if I carefully sort through my RSS subscriptions, keep them well pruned, I'll find that it's a useful tool for staying current in the field.

Reading about RSS feeds in Will Richardson's "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms," he gave instructions for how to subscribe to certain topics in current events using the advanced news search option at Google news.

Now, Latin isn't a subject that we often associate with current events. However, many people come to learn the Latin language because they are fascinated by Roman material culture, by ancient archaeology. Archaeological finds do appear in the news. Usually I find these articles by dumb luck or because friends found them by dumb luck and knew to pass them along. Now with a news subscription on my Google reader for ancient Roman archaeology, I'm reading fascinating articles about very recent discoveries.




And they aren't trivial discoveries either. Here's an article from MSNBC about a Carthaginian warship discovered on the Mediterranean sea floor. This is a vessel sailed over 2000 years ago and sunk in combat in the final battle of the First Punic war, a conflict that dramatically shaped Western history. We could all be speaking languages derived from Carthaginian right now if things had turned the other way.
For all students of history, both young and old, sometimes the physical evidence draws us in and provides a sense of awe that written accounts do not. I know I could use an archaeology feed like this to really reach some of my students who aren't connecting with the history and the culture through texts. In fact, there's no reason they can't subscribe to a relevant RSS on their own and teach me a thing or two. There's great potential for rich, student directed learning using a Google reader.

Convenite!

I know our course is on webtools, using the internet for communication and networking, but I just wanted to make a quick endorsement of real face to face networking. It's great to be able to get in touch with someone at any time through email and social networks. It's great to find relevant Twitter feeds or blogs and read the thoughts of professionals and educators whom you might never meet in person. But meeting them in person is more fun. If you find a conference or convention relevant to your field, I highly recommend attending.

Over Columbus weekend, I was fortunate enough to connect with colleagues and old friends at the Classical Association of the Atlantic States (CAAS) conference in New Jersey. It was a lot of travel time, but I'm glad I went. Maybe this is something that only a small, specialized field like Classics can do, but the conference was a great mix of scholars, professors, booksellers, writers, high school Latin teachers, graduate students and undergrads. The panels were therefore on very diverse in topics and and had diverse potential applications in my own studies and work. Everyone had something to offer and we all learned a lot from each other.

As convenient as internet networking can be, networking in person is a truly great experience. Try to find those opportunities to come together with fellow educators and make real connections!

Titio. Titiemusne?

I have recently signed up for a Twitter account. My handle is MsEffundatrix (my name, Latinisized).

I'm interested to learn more about this webtool. It may not be a good fit for me. My prose has been called Proustian, so 140 characters may not be the right thing for me. Still, I'm very optimistic about the possibilities for personal use and life-long learning.

However, I worry about asking my students to join Twitter before they are ready to manage the personal information they share. Twitter makes it easy to let a whole world of people know exactly what you're thinking in just an instant without much time for reflection. It takes experience to determine what is safe and appropriate to share with the world wide web.
That is not to say that adults do not have to learn this skill also. Perhaps many of our students are more savvy than adults when it comes to internet sharing. However, even the most luddite adult has had opportunities to forge his own identity and the permutations of that identity in each of the communities in which he participates.
An adolescent or pre-adolescent is still in the process of creating her primary adult identity. If she is still developing in her cocoon, I do not want my course requirements to push her out of her shell before she is ready. Her development should not be complicated by having it take place in the public eye. So I worry about asking students to put themselves in a position where they are expected to share themselves and their thoughts regularly and instantaneously.

On the other hand, I do believe students have to enter the wider world at some point. It's just a matter of when. They should learn to move beyond the cliques and social circles or their own high school. Taking part in a larger internet community, outside of their Facebook friends, could really expand their horizons. If they learn to follow current events, influential writers, politicians, and connect to those who also follow these Twitterers, this could be a new community of learners for our students. A very exciting prospect worth teachers' consideration.

We also have to consider the role of technology in the classroom. When we use webtools, are we using them to teach technological literacy, or are we using them to reach students where they are? This article in the Washington Post points out that Twitter is not very popular with teens. Using Twitter in the classroom does not reach students where they already are. It is a new medium, a new skill for them.
If an educator is already a successful user of Twitter, has found it very useful for her own professional development and life-long learning, than she is ready to share it with her students. But if the educator is still learning Twitter for herself, or has found it to be unhelpful, there's little reason to bring it into her classroom.

If Twitter is used in the classroom, there are many potential uses. Here are some of the ones I found in this article by Gabriela Grosseck and Carmen Holotescu that I like in particular:
~ Promoting Blogs: if you already use a blog for your class, instantly let everyone know about updates
~ Quick Announcements: if you feel comfortable being in constant contact with students, Twitter can be checked on computer or phone for up to date information
~ Research: especially on current events and developments in the news
~ Succinct responses: learning how to communicate quickly and precisely is a very important skill. I'm not sure I've mastered it myself; I tend to ramble. If the instructor creates a specific learning activity based around succinct communication, Twitter with its 140 character limit may be a useful tool.

Twitter is not the only microblogging tool available to educators. Micro Mobs could also be used. As Mr. Byrne explains, Micro Mobs can be used to create a public or private micromessaging network. If you're worried about using a public service like Twitter for more private announcements meant for only your students and their families, or your coworkers, this might be a great alternative.

Metaphorae

While trying to find Latin words that meant "network" and "web," their literal meanings suddenly occurred to me.

Network, Latin reticulum: a fish net, a small mesh bag

Now that is a great metaphor. I think our modern networks do the same things that ancient networks did, i.e. hold our source of sustenance. Whether that sustenance is fish and vegetables or information and knowledge, a woven lattice keeps everything together for us.
But we don't just leave the fish in there, or the information. Fish and information aren't much good to us lying around. We have to prepare it somehow, process it, let it stew, and then consume it for ourselves, incorporate it, sate and nourish our minds and bodies.

Then there's the web. One word for web in Latin is orsus. It can refer to the warp on a loom, the threads that you use to start making woven cloth. Because of this, the word orsus can also mean beginning or undertaking.

Another great metaphor. The webs in our life can be the foundation of our learning, whether that web is made up of face to face relationships, a PLN, or the world wide web. Then the fun part is adding in all the different threads, weaving all sorts of new outside information and experiences into a single cloth, everything being connected.

I should point out that Romans are obsessed with weaving and use images of weaving in so many metaphors. It's interesting to discover how weaving was associated with feminine virtues. A common gravestone epitaph for women was lanam fecit: she worked wool.

I wonder what ancient Romans would think of the internet and its ability to connect people. Perhaps they would be reminded of their system of roads which connected all the peoples of the Roman empire. If they looked at them on a map, perhaps it would appear to them like a net or a web, and they would refer to the internet using the same metaphors we use today.

Pax

Searching for a title of this post, I wanted to translate Ning into Latin, but I did not know where the name came from. Eventually I discovered it is the Chinese word for peace.

Our task this week was to search through the site Ning.com for Ning social network groups relevant to us as teachers.

A general complaint: I do not know as much history as I would like, and perhaps I am unfair in saying this, but Napoleon III has really made my life difficult. I discovered it was he who decided to refer to everything south of the United States "Latin America." It was essentially a little propaganda so that France could try to gain some imperial influence in there along with Spain and Portugal. Little did he know, that one day instructors of the Latin language would be searching the internet for resources and all they would find are sites about twentieth century politics and salsa and tango lessons.
I mention this because I had trouble finding Latin language sites on Ning. But I do not blame Ning. I blame Napoleon III because I have this problem all the time.

But even beyond this issue, I thought the Ning search function was a little problematic. Even when I entered topics less esoteric than Latin instruction, like using technology in the classroom, it seemed like a lot of unrelated Ning groups came up. I wonder if anyone else had trouble with the search feature?

I found two groups that were relevant to me as a Latin teacher: Schola and eClassics.


Schola is a Ning conducted entirely in Latin. All posts not in Latin are deleted. To be honest, it is a little intimidating. I am very good at parsing Latin grammar, understanding etymologies, translating ancient texts, discussing and teaching ancient Roman culture. However when it comes to Neo-Latin, and speaking and writing in Latin I am very weak. Navigating the whole site in Latin is intimidating. I am not sure I would recommend it to students in part because it is difficult to make sure your personal information is safe if you can not tell how much you are sharing. But I think this site could be a really great way for me to improve my Latin production skills. I had the opportunity to attend a spoken Latin conference this summer, and really enjoyed it. But instead of a once of year event, now I can use Latin for communication any time from my own computer.
NB: This site asks you to fill out some information, and then you will be emailed before you can belong to the group.

eClassics is a place for everyone interested in classics, although it is mostly teachers. It is not updated very regularly but people are responding to each others queries. People are sharing advice about teaching grammar, using mnemonic devices, different resources to use, even finding jobs. I especially like the videos that have been posted. Some, like the music videos in Latin, can be used in the classroom. Others are great tutorials for me as I try to include more inductive learning of grammar and spoken Latin.

Leges artificii

I have picked a piece from the NY Times Sunday Magazine Education Issue I cited last post, the article Achieving Techno-Literacy by Kevin Kelly. He discusses his experience home-schooling his son for a year, the role technology played, and the kinds of techno-literacy lessons he wanted to incorporate. Here's his list of some key ideas:

• Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs.

Sometimes it's not just a problem of people not looking for the costs, it's that people accept them easily. Take cars for example. This technology contributes to 40,000 deaths every year in the US alone. That's almost like having a Vietnam war every year. I think about this a lot, but I still drive. Do you? Looking for costs is important, but it may not be enough.

• Technologies improve so fast you should postpone getting anything you need until the last second. Get comfortable with the fact that anything you buy is already obsolete.

I feel like this could be taught in a home economics course as well as a technology course. And could be taught to school administration. We have to think long term when we buy into new technologies, for ourselves or our schools.

• Before you can master a device, program or invention, it will be superseded; you will always be a beginner. Get good at it.

This might be my favorite one. "You will always be a beginner" is great advice for our age. Technology changes fast. Economies change fast. Even our climate is changing fast. Expert beginners are going to succeed no matter what the future has in store.

• Be suspicious of any technology that requires walls. If you can fix it, modify it or hack it yourself, that is a good sign.

A skill I sorely lack. Maybe it's just me, but it seems that its only my friends who profess computer geekdom who can modify the software and/or hardware that corporations put out for us. Perhaps I'm alone, but I feel any technological instruction I received failed to include a creative element. I learned to use the system, not create my own, or even understand the mechanics behind the system.

• The proper response to a stupid technology is to make a better one, just as the proper response to a stupid idea is not to outlaw it but to replace it with a better idea.

I wonder if this is like evolution. People think that natural selection somehow perfects living things. It doesn't. It creates organisms that are adapted enough to survive and reproduce. Improvement slows drastically after it reaches a bare minimum (except for the random chance of mutation). The same might be true with technology and ideas. Stupid technologies may persist if they're good enough to get by on. It could be very difficult for better technologies to succeed if people have adapted to the stupid ones. We should also look at the first rule to make sure that the costs of stupid technologies aren't costing us too much while we work on new technologies.

• Every technology is biased by its embedded defaults: what does it assume?

Yes! All technologies make assumptions about what we need, what we like, what's best for everyone. We are constantly taking them for granted. This is partly because our thinking is so flexible. We can adjust to their assumptions without realizing it. Keep alert and be critical!

• Nobody has any idea of what a new invention will really be good for. The crucial question is, what happens when everyone has one?

I bet our technology and social studies teachers could help us out here. Applications and effects of new inventions have often had unintended results. What examples from history could demonstrate this to our students?

• The older the technology, the more likely it will continue to be useful.

A close second for favorite tech-literacy lesson. I think we sometimes fail to respect the filter of time. The tried and true are just as relevant, or even more so, than the latest trend. But maybe that's just the classicist talking.

• Find the minimum amount of technology that will maximize your options.

Another lesson in frugality. Administrators (and any consumer) should plan ahead and think how to get the most bang for the buck.
And the more streamlined our technological resources are, the fewer unavoidable side effects we have to deal with: the fewer things to break, the fewer things to become obsolete, etc.

I found these literacy lessons relevant and interesting . They were broad enough to be applicable to all sorts of technologies and webtools, and they also required critical thinking skills.

Periodicum opportunum

NY Times Sunday Magazine Education Issue

I had forgotten that the Times does this every September, devotes a magazine solely to education. Fortunately for me and my classmates, this year their focus is technology and learning.

I have enjoyed what I have read so far. I may devote a future blog post to a specific article. For now, I simply wanted to share this with everyone. I would love to know what everyone else thinks is interesting. Happy reading!

Obstantia frustra est

The learner is like a Star Fleet captain. She has powerful tools at her disposal to aid her learning: a super computer with instant access to all collected knowledge in her quadrant of the galaxy, and a faster than light speed ship to take her wherever she needs to be to learn new things by direct discovery. She's a team player. Her crew is a community of talented, learned, creative individuals who are ready and able to contribute to the mission. Many of them are also good friends who provide the captain with social and emotional support. She's also part of an even larger network, the United Federation of Planets. She can be in touch with peoples from all different cultures, each with its own learning and perspective. They can inspire her and bring fresh insight to her own explorations.

But sometimes there are great challenges. A captain might find a species so strange and different from her own that the universal translator can no longer function. Her ship might fly through a spatial anomaly causing the engine to fail and subspace communication to go offline. Her crew might suddenly become infected with an alien virus. She might become stranded on an alien planet, separated from all her technological tools as well as her crew. Sometimes, she must make profound moral choices, and there is no one who can make them for her. A Star Fleet captain's work requires years of training, deep personal knowledge, the ability to reflect, flexibility, creativity, openness to others' ideas, communication skills, and self reliance. But she is prepared for any new encounter she must face.

Now many of you probably aren't sci-fi nerds, and you might not have seen much Star Trek. You may need a concrete example to better understand my metaphor. Let us consider my personal hero, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation Starship Enterprise.



The character is a true Renaissance man. Of course he can pilot a starship, conduct diplomatic negotiations between two warring planets, lead scientific research missions, and bring out the best in all of those serving under his command. That's just standard Star Trek captain stuff.
But Picard can also direct a Shakespeare play. He can read ancient Greek, speak English, French, Latin and Klingon. He sometimes publishes articles on xenoarchaeology. He can be your Cha'DIch in a Klingon trial. He sings Gilbert and Sullivan tunes. He can make wine. He can fence and ride horses. And his moral compass never fails.

He exemplifies what the Germans call selbst bildung, self-education. He is a lifelong learner, constantly developing his own well-rounded personal store of knowledge. And good thing too. When he's out exploring the final frontier and a crisis hits, more often than not he's on his own.

There was a time he was plugged into a vast learning network. Connections between nodes were never down. Aggregated information flowed freely. But that didn't go so well.


Picard was assimilated by the Borg, a collective of cybernetic organisms who travel through the galaxy assimilating peoples and their whole cultural knowledge. This destroys all individuality in the process of course, and the Borg don't mind killing a lot of people to get the job done.
Picard became Locutus of Borg. He no longer could choose what to share, how to apply his knowledge. Everything he knew, everything he experienced, everything he was became part of the collective and was used to kill hundreds of Federation citizens.

Since I've already given away so much of the episode I don't feel bad telling you that in the end his fellow officers find a way to disconnect him from the Borg and remove his cybernetic implants. It took him a long time to heal emotionally from the experience but he does recover. He goes on to be a brilliant Star Fleet captain through four more seasons and four feature films.

*****

Our class read an article by George Siemens, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age.I do agree with some of his theses. Yes, the "ability to see connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill." Sometimes people keep specializing and specializing and stop seeing the connections. It's the connections that illuminate knowledge. The connections make information relevant and meaningful.
I also agree with what he says in his video The Impact of Social Learning Software on Learning: “It really boils down to our ability to have a dialogue with other individuals. And when we have that dialogue, we ourselves grow in our knowledge, and we grow in our own understanding and our own ideas sometimes." I know I've experienced that in my own learning. Communication forces us to articulate what we mean. Dialectic with those who have more knowledge, or with those who disagree with us can teach us so much more than we can learn on our own. There are tremendous benefits to being an active member of a community of learners. As teachers, we have to teach our students effective communication skills, provide a place where dialogue can take place, and direct our students toward other forums where this knowledge is happening.

And yet,
there is so much that I disagree with. One quote in the article really bothered me:
"The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe."

On a literal level, I fundamentally disagree. I care very much whether the water coming out of my pipes is safe and pure. No fancy faucet fixture is going to make me OK with drinking toxic contaminants.

And on a metaphorical level, I can't help but think of the Borg. Their organizational effectiveness is flawless. Their efficiency unparalleled. Their "pipes" are perfect.
Captain Picard was sometimes less connected to new developments than I am today. I'm updated by Facebook, and podcasts, and news sites about all sorts of events, and can comment on them on Facebook or my blog immediately, while Picard has a lot of debriefing to do when he returns from remote corners of the galaxy. But it was OK to be disconnected. He could focus on one job at a time and use his full concentration. He wasn't constantly distracted when he had to save the ship or make an ethical decision.
As Locutus he was completely connected. The millions of voices of the collective were always with him. The group knew so much more than he could ever know as an individual. But what came down the "pipes" of this process was significant. The collected knowledge, the constant updating, the efficiency and the connectivism of the Borg were used to perpetuate violence.

I think we can learn from the connectivist theory of learning. But I'd rather have a learner who may not always be up to date, but is unique, an autodidact, and can think and act for herself regardless of her situation.

Doctrina futura

For my class on educational webtools, we were given links to several videos about education and technology. Watching them was in a way a difficult task. As I mentioned before, learning about technology and teaching makes me realize I have all these luddite prejudices when it comes to education.

I know there's a personal element. I bristle at calls to bring the internet in the classroom because I often lament afternoons, nights, days lost surfing and searching the web with very little to show for it. And I also recall my most memorable learning experiences: discussing a short story with our desks pulled around in a circle with my favorite English teacher, dissecting a fish and getting to stay late so that we could try to remove the brain, barefoot nature walks identifying trees by their bark in environmental science, pulling up a chair in my Greek professor's office with nothing but a text and a large dictionary between us, studying for a psychology final with a good friend sitting half buried in our notes. When I hear criticism of education, calling it useless because it doesn't involve modern media, I feel all the beautiful moments that make me want to be a teacher and a life-long learner are being belittled.

But even when I try to be more objective, I find connections between advocates for technology in the classroom and the manifestos of Futurists and the like. The Futurists were an Italian (and Russian, I believe) art movement. They took "out with the old, in with the new" to its extreme. Nothing old was worth saving, only the fastest and newest technologies were worthwhile.

I actually think their art is very interesting. Here's Boccioni's Dynamism of a Soccer Player currently located at the MoMA in NYC.

And at the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo you can see this example, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash.

While I like their art, philosophically they supported the violence that came with technological advancement. The movement ended when the jingoistic among them were killed during World War I.

Note well. I am in no way saying that people who promote digital learning are violent or pro-war. I think people consistently cite technology as a way to bring people together for cooperation and I support them in their efforts, 100%.

But when I watch these videos, like Did you know? with its almost ominous background music, many of them describe the rise and economic development of India and China, shortly before or after discussing the uncertain job market of today's students. When you combine that with a call for the fastest, newest, best technologies, doesn't it sound like a competition? My question is, is it a healthy competition?

*****

One video stood out to me:
Educational Change Challenge by educator and blogger Darren Cannell.

When he discusses technology and learning, he talks about it in terms of "understanding student culture." I like this anthropological approach. To effectively communicate with our students, we have to be able to use their cultural tools. We have to do what anthropologists call "participant observation." With the spirit of Terrence's sentiment

Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto
I'm a human: I reckon nothing of humanity is strange to me

you learn the culture by doing it.

It's like being able to speak a second language. The more I learn about current practices of remixing and sampling of art and media, like the millions of montages on youtube created by kids just like our students, the better I can explain Roman poetry and art.

No, really.

Romans often took older works, sometimes Roman sometimes Greek, and took their conventions, language style, and even direct quotes for use in their own poetry. Classical scholars refer to it as "intertext." And Roman sculpture recombined elements of native Italic, Classical Greek, and Hellenistic Greek sculpture, and mixed and matched all the different elements for different effects. 19th and 20th century scholars took this to mean that Romans weren't as clever or creative as the Greeks because they couldn't come up with their own ideas. Sometimes I think this idea still holds in standard social studies curricula. But today we're realizing that the Romans saw this as the peak of artistry: to take something beautiful that has stood the test of time, like Homeric epic or Polykleitos' sculpture, master their technique, and then strive to make it even better.

I think this stuff is fascinating, and if I learn about contemporary examples of remakes and remixes that my students are listening to, or watching, or probably making for themselves, I'm going to be better equipped to demonstrate the relevance of Latin and Roman cultural studies to my students.

Colloquia utilia et gaudia

How many of you have seen a TED talk before? I can't remember where I first heard of them, but they're conferences at which some of the best thinkers and creators of our time come to talk. The videos of their lectures are then posted for free on www.ted.com You can find lectures on so many topics: technology, morality, economics, chaos theory, art, education, biology, entertainment, psychology, I could go on. Even if you can't find one specifically for classroom use, you'll be able to find one that informs you professionally or inspires you personally.

This weekend I found one for the math teachers. Useful to all teachers of course, but this one is particularly about how math needs a make-over

I found it fascinating because his presentation basically throws the whole idea of scaffolding out the window, and in a way I'm convinced. Obviously patient problem solving and general mathematical reasoning are their own skill sets, but I think we can all learning something from him. Maybe more help isn't what are students need, just more engaging tasks and more time to practice them.

I also found Dan Meyer's blog It seems to be a way for him to discuss what he does in his class with others concerned with math education; it doesn't seem to be a class tool for his students. Reading the posts and the comments left by colleagues, I think he's created a very useful medium for himself. I particularly enjoyed the posts "WCYDWT: Dirt" (inspired by the film Holes) and "Making Multimedia Earn Its Keep"

de securitate et moribus

Mark Zuckerberg may think that privacy is no longer a social norm, and you may agree or disagree with him. But as teachers, the safety and personal security of the young adults and children in our classroom comes first. Even if in the future there were a radical shift in privacy norms, we have a duty to protect our students and, perhaps more importantly, teach them how to protect themselves when using the internet.

When it comes to safety rules and guidelines the more explicit the better. Don't be vague. Take time to discuss specific scenarios and practices with your students. When you say "be safe" students may have their own concept of what is safe practice that differs with what you and the school community believe is safe internet behavior. Be crystal clear.

I also think we should be clear about other practices becoming of responsible internet denizens. Perhaps it's quaint, but we as teachers may be in a position to help establish manners and etiquette in the digital age. Behind the anonymity that the internet provides, many creators of web content fail to employ social graces that create civil and meaningful discussion. This is no way a prejudice against the young. This is merely my own observation of and frustration with typical internet discourse. I think we have the right and the responsibility to insist on consistently respectful web communication. Or am I just old fashioned and overreacting?

Here are some guidelines I would insist on for my class. I look forward to reading the rules my fellow teachers have devised.

Personal Safety
#1- Students will keep personal information out of blog posts. This includes:
~ surname
~ phone number
~ home address
~ school name and address
~ the names of other local areas (e.g. don't use a blog post to plan a meeting at a library or coffee shop)
~ city
~ any other information that could help someone locate or contact you in person.
#2- Do not share digital personal information such as
~ usernames
~ passwords
~ links to other blogs or social networking sites that share any of your personal information.
#3- Students will report any comments posted by unknown parties that are disrespectful, suspicious or make you feel uncomfortable. When in doubt, tell your teacher or parents.
Computer Safety
#4- Students will not download or install any software without permission.
#5 -Students will not click on any ads.
Academic Honesty
#6- Students will not share their password and username with anyone except their teacher or parents.
#7- Students will not log on using the account of another student.
Respect and Courtesy
#8- Think of the class blog as a digital extension of the classroom. Do not post any links that are irrelevant to the task at hand. This includes any material inappropriate for school.
#9- Using the class blog, treat your teacher and fellow students in the same respectful manner you treat them in the physical classroom.
~ No name calling or put-downs.
~ No offensive language.
~ No comments that are prejudiced against people of different backgrounds (ethnicity, country of origin, race, religion, language, gender, sexual orientation).
~ Respect everyone's views; don't use any hurtful language even if you disagree.
~ All criticism should be constructive.

#10- Because this is a classroom project (and your teacher isn't always up to date on current lingo), minimize your use of internet abbreviations so that everyone can understand, and we continue to practice "school language" conventions.

~Please discuss these rules with your teacher if you have any questions.
~Anyone who fails to follows these rules will not be allowed to participate in our blog project.
~ All students and parents will read these rules before signing the permission slip below. All students will hand in the signed permission slip before taking part in the blog project.

Consilia

Salvete omnes! Welcome to my blog about teaching and learning Latin in the digital age.

In my graduate school class on internet resources and teaching second languages, we've read Blogs/Wikis/Podcasts and Other Powerful Webtools for Classrooms by Will Richardson. I found myself alternately frustrated and inspired by the initial chapters. I will be honest that I have a lot of reservations about using technology in the classroom. Perhaps I will share these reservations in more detail at a later time. Lest I get carried away with my feelings about the downsides of webtools and learning, I want to express my doubts as succinctly as my friends the Romans would. In all things, including technological tools, let us remember the golden mean:

Nihil nimis
Nothing in excess.

So let us move on to some of the potential uses of blogs in the Latin classroom.

#1- The Digital Bulletin Board
Latin and the culture of Latin speakers is all around us. It can appear in a weekly column in the New York Times On Language. It can appear in the BBC and in your own backyard. There are tasty morsels throughout the media, including digital media. To share these new discoveries, enriching our understanding of Latin language and culture, a blog might be just the thing. One of the benefits of the blogs is that students may share fascinating finds just as easily as the teacher can. Here we have a community where everyone learns together, as equals, outside the walls of the classroom.

#2- Summer Book Club
I need feedback from my fellow educators, to see if this is at all feasible. I don't wish to encroach on the territory of English teachers, but I think we might all fight the good fight to encourage independent reading.
You see, everyone tells me that learning Latin is so important because it helps your English vocabulary, which is absolutely true. However, and perhaps I shouldn't say this publicly lest I endanger my professional prospects, the best way to improve your English vocabulary (according to my own high school Latin teacher) is to read. Read. Just keep reading. All sorts of things. Dissecting a word, like an animal in a lab, is very educational. But how will you know its true nature unless you spend some time observing it in its natural habitat?
So I envisioned assigning students reading over the summer. Not a terrible burden, a historical fiction novel set in Rome or the middle ages, or perhaps a short Roman play translated into English. With a closed blog, students could respond to the novel, ask their fellow students questions, and respond to those questions, while still fulfilling family, work, travel and extracurricular summer obligations. The instructor would have the option of either using the blog as evidence of students' reading, or take part in the discussion as well.

#3- Extended Classroom
I've come to this teaching certification/Master's degree program and a most fortuitous time. I'm so lucky to be taking classes alongside several other preservice Latin teachers. Our needs and challenges are different than those of teachers of other subjects, and even of teachers of modern second languages. Collaboration with my fellow Latinists has been absolutely essential to my professional development and a tremendous pleasure.
With the connective power of the internet why should that collaboration end just because we've all gotten fabulous, well-paid jobs throughout NY state? As teachers, we could have our own blog and continue to share ideas, advice, and commiseration. Or our students could work on group projects together from separate geographic locations.

I look forward to hearing the comments of my classmates and fellow teachers. Until next post, valete!

VS