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.