Chiron has always supported the direct method for teaching classical languages. In other time Comenius already encouraged to avoid an excessive use of grammar in teaching. Nowadays methods such as Ørberg LLPSI, Rouse’s Greek boy or Athenaze are more and more usual in our classrooms.

Today more than ever we should treat our languages for what they are, something alive, to be used, to be touched, to be spoken. Against the black future offered by the Wert law, which reduces the presence of Classics in secondary school, we intend to bring Latin and Greek to the fore, display them on the network as they are, far from the academicism of the classrooms: alive languages ready to be used, tools to communicate. And, for that purpose, we will use social networks. So we encourage all willing students and teachers of classical languages to participate in the Pipiatio Classica, on Twitter, to be held next Thursday, November 15th. Of course, all we are going to write will be in Latin and Greek.

Introduce yourself, meet people, learn to express yourself in Latin and Greek. Mistakes are allowed! Let’s learn together! Add the hashtag #pipiatioclassica to your tweets in order to follow the event from here.

We also encourage all the institutions or associations related to the Classical World to take part in it and to disseminate it.

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<a href="http://storify.com/chiron/pipiatio-classica" target="_blank"><img title="pipiatio classica" src="http://www.chironweb.org/wp-content/uploads/logopipiatio1.png" alt="pipiatio classica" width="200" border="0" hspace="0" vspace="0" /></a>

“La SEEC ha decidido conceder este premio a la Asociación Chiron por la encomiable labor que está llevando a cabo a través del portal de Internet www.chironweb.org, que ha conseguido desarrollar un “proyecto colaborativo” que aúna los trabajos que los profesores de nuestras materias venían realizando de manera individual. El resultado ha sido la creación de un sitio web dedicado al Mundo Clásico, en el cual colaboran desinteresadamente centenares de personas y que ha generado una enorme ilusión y un inusitadamente fructífero intercambio de opiniones y experiencias entre profesores y alumnos de Griego, Latín y Cultura Clásica, y también entre quienes, en general, se interesan por la Antigüedad grecorromana. Se trata, en nuestra opinión, de una labor valiosísima, que ha alcanzado una difusión extraordinaria y ha generado entre nuestros docentes y alumnos una ilusión que consideramos muy importante para el futuro de nuestros estudios, y que está sirviendo también para poner de manifiesto el entusiasmo, la dedicación y la preparación de los profesores de Latín, Griego y Cultura Clásica. Queremos destacar igualmente el carácter innovador de la experiencia, que está sirviendo de modelo para otras áreas de conocimiento, en España y fuera de España. ”

It is more than five years ago that this collaborative project began. Since then, we have been growing ceaselessly. Nobody could ever imagine that we would reach our actual status, sharing day by day thousands of resources about the Classical World, from very distant places, on a non-commercial basis, with a common enthusiasm, literally living a 2.0 life, all of us readers, all of us authors. Now, this great idea grown without proper names has been reckoned by the SEEC as a way to promote and defence the Classical Studies in the same level as the Gredos Biblioteca Clásica, the Bernat Metge Foundation, the National Council for Scientific Research (CSIC, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas), the National Museum of Roman Art, in Mérida, or Ediciones Clásicas. We are heartily thankful to the SEEC for such a special award.

As we have said so many times, we all are Chiron, those who contribute materials, who use them, who manage our site, who silently visit us without any visible trace. The award and homage is for everyone, for all of us. As we would like to share such an important distinction, may we ask you to write down as a comment to this post, for example, some of your ideas about what Chiron means to you? Should you use a social network, please use the hashtag #chironweb so we can follow your contributions here.

Can you imagine every Classics teacher sharing one idea with each other? How many are we? We might create a huge bank of ideas available for everyone.

Feel free to tell us something about a successful activity you have developed with your students. No need to make superlative proposals, just the good real and punctual stuff. This is not about sharing resources, either (our wiki and other services, like Slideshare, Issuu, Google Docs, Slideboom, SlideServe… are designed to keep up to such functionality), but about explaining other colleagues the development of your activity, the material resources used, and the level and matter they are linked to.

Easy: you give an idea and get hundreds. Fancy you might give a hand? Fill in  this form and be a part of the community of Classicists who have shared an idea in Chiron.

The petition and some practical issues concerning how to spread it can be found here. If you feel that this initiative is interesting, you are invited to sign y communicate it.

The course is designed as a continuation, and actualization of the one held in nov., 2008, which merited such a good reception among its participants. Its materials were put together as a book titled: Chiron en Compostela: didáctica 2.0 para las lenguas y la cultura clásicas. This time, the course will also count with some members of Asociación Ludere et Discere, from Sagunt, who will present some of their workshops of Classical Culture.

The course, homologated by the Consellería de Educación, will have a virtual part using the Moodle LMS supported by SEEC-Galicia.

We sincerely hope that this proposal seems interesting for Classics teachers all over Galicia.

More info and inscription forms, at the Sección de Galicia de la SEEC website.

We have a proposal for you at Chiron. Participate in this initiative born out of the inspiration from the collective reading of Don Quixote. Let’s all read the Odyssey and the Aeneid in the language they were written in. Anyone can do it — get your students involved, call your friends, invite those who studied Greek and Latin with you. You just need a video camera or webcam and an Internet connection.

Participating is very easy:

• Fill out the form with your name and e-mail address. (Odyssey, Aeneid)
• We’ll contact you to assign you a passage between 20 and 60 verses.
• You’ll have a week to record a video with that reading, upload it to your YouTube account and send us the link.
• Your video will appear on a playlist (Odyssey, Aeneid) where all the sent videos are going to be collected.

Are you really missing the chance to participate?

Before adopting the decision, we also considered that other Chiron spaces are already used for the functionalities we were trying to unify in a unique social network: debates and questions may be found at the forum; sharing files is an available option for our different galleries (images, presentations, videos); we share our social bookmarks and some other resources in the wiki.

Apart from that, Chiron is still social in other spaces. See you at Facebook, Twitter,  Friendfeed…

The initiative came from the Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Extremadura, specially from Antonio Moreno and José Luis Redrejo, whom we would like to acknowledge their efforts on this project and their skillful help. Antonio and José Luis have been working in connection with Yves Ouvrard, the creator of Collatinus. This multilingual version of Collatinus, based on G. Jeanneau’s dictionary is hosted by one of the servers owned by the Consejería.

The actual version is still in a beta status. We believe that the more people review it the better will be the revision. Please test it and tell us about the issues found at this e-mail address.

You may also find interesting these other sites:

• Nodictionaries
• Numen
• Alpheios

Virtual classrooms join in the same place activities, blogs, wiki pages, forums, class notes, links, videos, glossaries. Teachers will organise this offer in the most suitable way for their students. There are endless possibilities, as can be seen in this example.

Do you feel like having a try? Contact us with both your personal and school data, a brief summary of your project, the target students and any other kind of information you may consider appropriate.