There is so much that an iPad can help with in Classics teaching beyond the online flashcards for learning vocabulary. While that is already an excellent tool, it’s just the start. Here are three useful apps and practical ways they can enrich teaching and learning in and out of the classroom.
1. Explain Everything
This app allows you to upload images, type, make annotations, and embed videos. You can even record yourself speaking over the presentation. This is great for project-based learning. When teaching the material sources in Classical Civilisation or Ancient History, for example, pupils can be assigned a source and make a presentation using this app. Instead of then wasting valuable lesson time watching pupils read out the slides they’ve created, painful for both students and teachers, everyone can share their presentations, listen to their peers privately and the teacher can assess separately. These can then also be saved and adapted for revision purposes.
This app can also be used for language learning. I once set a ‘correct my mistakes’ homework on the app, uploading sentences translated poorly from English to Latin. Pupils had to annotate the corrections whilst verbally explaining why it was wrong. It took a bit of time to mark but it was really worth it; although some had corrected the ending well, their reasoning was flawed. If I hadn’t asked them to record their thoughts, I would have marked it simply as correct, assuming they knew the grammar behind it.
2. Nearpod
This is a useful app for short tests, mainly as starters or plenaries. It has the usual true/false, multiple choice, and short answers features. It has two key selling points. Firstly, you can upload pictures and ask pupils to annotate them as part of the quiz: very useful for material sources, or for literary criticism. I even once used it when teaching nominatives and accusatives, asking pupils to highlight the cases in a text. Secondly, you can share the answers anonymously with the class. So, for example, when practising English to Latin/Greek, you can share back one of the responses to everyone’s ipad for discussion. The anonymity means no one is embarrassed, (though they often claim their answers) and everyone can be objective in their feedback. The downside is that you cannot save these answers, download, print and put them in a folder, but I often wonder whether pupils ever actually go back over these written tests as part of their revision anyway…
3. Edupuzzle
This app allows you to upload videos and then embed questions or discussion points during them. This means that no longer do you have to waste lesson time watching videos, pausing them to ensure pupils have listened and understood and filling out worksheets. Instead, you can set it as homework and they have to watch the video in order to answer all the questions. If they want, they can re-view the video at their own pace. The computer marks the answers and the teacher can see how pupils did. It’s a great time saver as well as being a valuable tool. There are so many excellent videos now that help enrich our topics, and this is a useful and fun way for pupils to access them.
