Free Latin lessons for state school teachers

20 Jun 2008

The following anouncement caught my eye and seems to me an excellent example of universities putting something back into the wider education community:

The Cambridge School Classics Project (CSCP), part of the University of Cambridge, is launching an initiative to provide free distance learning courses in Latin for teachers in UK state schools.

Since 2000 the number of non-selective state schools offering Latin has increased from 150 to over 450, following the development of e-learning materials which allow students to study Latin where a specialist Latin teacher is not available. There are now over 300 ‘non-specialist’ teachers running beginners’ Latin courses in UK state schools. Many of these teachers would like to offer Latin to a higher level but lack the subject specialist knowledge to do so.

CSCP already runs a variety of distance learning courses in Latin, from beginners’ level up to GCSE and AS. The Project has now decided to allow teachers to follow these courses free of charge if they are running, or intending to run, a Latin class in their schools.

CSCP Director, Will Griffiths, said “I have seen for myself the skills, enthusiasm and commitment of teachers who are not Latin specialists but who are giving up their free time to help children learn Latin. Many would like to learn a little more Latin themselves and we are delighted to help them do so. This initiative will not only benefit the teachers themselves, but also the students they teach throughout their careers.”

More details: www.IndependentLearners.com

User Comments

Evan der Millner - 07 Dec 2008

Distance Learning Latin

Mike,
You may not be aware of the Latinum project, which came into existence in early 2007. Latinum is produced in London, and is a free distance learning course for Classical Latin, that has been made as a voluntary effort. It is delivered by podcast, and is proving highly successful - since going online, just about 3 million audio files have been downloaded, and there are thousands of users, scattered across the world. At present 200 000 audio files are downloaded from the site per month. Latinum takes a unique approach, and teaches Classical Latin through the medium of conversation, and immersion, interspersed with grammatical dissertations. Several hundred hours of recorded lessons are now available, directly from the latinum website, or through itunes. There is no charge for using the course. The course will take the user to an extremely high level - to spoken and reading fluency, over the course of several hundred lessons. It would take around 3 years to complete the course. The website for Latinum is http://latinum.mypodcast.com
A simple 'google' search for 'latin podcast' will also locate it.

Laqtinum , apart from offering formal lessons, also offers the internet's largest depository of free Latin audio - readings of Classical Latin poetry,and texts, stories in Latin, and a huge vocabulary building resource, where words are presented by sematic field.
More details: http://latinum.mypodcast.com