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.