The Cambridge Latin Course, a project aimed at bringing Latin in to state schools, has endured a bumpy ride. The DVD version had been launched more than a year ago after promising trials, but then faltered with software problems. Cambridge blamed its partner in the project, Granada Learning, who had inherited the project, on which £5 million of government funding had been spent, from another division of Granada. Nigel Ward, MD of Granada Learning, felt that the criticism was one-sided and political. "If we started afresh, I would not work with an academic institution and a particular book. It's a volatile mixture. The fact is, schools build networks in different ways. When you roll out a piece of software, there will always be issues." He also faced criticism from other academics and teachers, because the Cambridge DVD ties users to a particular course book.
From a commercial point of view, Cambridge can have few grumbles. What started as a project to create an online and potentially free learning resource has seen an existing course book turned into a saleable DVD at public expense - good business by any account. Cambridge is now sole controller of the project, and Will Griffith, director of the Cambridge team, is confident that last year's problems are over. 'Technical flaws have been put right and we have given the new DVD a rigorous run-through," he says.
Griffith believes that the DVD has much to offer both schools with specialist Latin support and those with without. He estimates that about 500 schools are up and running, a figure likely to rise this year. The DVD is well-produced, with lexical support a click away from the Latin text (unlike a book where all that looking-up slows the impact of comprehension). The video is professionally finished, with plenty of engaging clips to introduce the world of Rome. Some dramatised scenes are a bit thin scriptwise: the mildly nerdish Quintus arguing why Rome is better than Greece is no teenage role model. The final hours of Pompeii, on the other hand, are nicely done, with compelling footage and narrative from the experts. The layout and structure is set to the pattern of the book - a strength and a weakness.
The coursebook was established in the 1970s and remains part of the product, if only as a foil for screen fatigue. However, to model multimedia on a course book imposes limitations. The temptation not to reinvent the wheel is understandable, but the multimedia wheel is a different shape. It might have been more enterprising to start with a blank piece of paper - or spider chart - than jazz up an existing product from a different medium. Young minds can be fascinated by words, their shape, their function. And multimedia is an excellent medium to stimulate this, opening up all sorts of opportunities for on-screen word games, word building and sentence structuring, and for parallels with English, French, Spanish and all the other languages that have evolved from Latin or are copiously fed with Latin. There's a wealth of stuff that could be done here, which would only add to the attraction of the course to non-specialist teachers from other disciplines.
The coursebook has for some time been the most popular Latin book in schools, though opinion remains divided over its merits, particularly its treatment of grammar. Despite many revisions, the course has never managed to shake off its roots in the linguistic relativism of the 1960s. A risky approach for a dead language, or one frozen in time, which inevitably turns up a prescriptive grammar.
The arrival of the DVD will reinvigorate the debate, with Lynne Truss troopers putting the case for clearer focus on grammatical content. But the course has plenty of supporters too, from a wide range of schools that proves how it has spread interest in Latin beyond traditional boundaries.
The DVD is fresh, lively and brimming with content, and I am intrigued to see how Latin fares, buoyed up by mainstream technology. For schools new to Latin and with a sense of adventure, this DVD remains the best place to start. Timetable pressure will mean out-of-hours clubs, for which some pupils are already getting up at dawn. Surely a sign of health.
|
Cambridge Latin Course
Cambridge School Classics Project
Tel : 01223 330579
www.cambridgescp.com
Prices:
DVD (i.e. Book One) - £40.95 + VAT.
Multi-use site licence - £45 incl. VAT
Textbook (Book One) - £9.75
Teacher's Guide : £22.50 |
