I. Exploring

Ask your students to explore some of the buildings already on VRoma, along with the texts and images linked to them. You might want to log in with them the first time to get them oriented, then ask to them to do some exploring on their own or in groups. Try giving them some specific questions to answer using the information available on VRoma. This is a good way for students to become comfortable with the environment. There are a number of “treasure hunt” style exercises (in English and in Latin) already available in the Teaching Resources section of the VRoma web site.

II. Building exercises

As a class project, ask your students to build a typical Roman house or other structure. Students can be asked to incorporate images they find on the internet, Latin texts, or other resources into their projects. This is an excellent group project. You may want to specify a minimum (and maximum) number of rooms the building should have.

III. Collaborations

1. Meet on-line with other Latin classes at pre-arranged times, to discuss something that both classes are learning about. You can also arrange for a guest expert to join you virtually and talk to students or answer their questions.
2. Set up on-line tutoring sessions with your students or ask them to study together in a VRoma room with links to texts and other study materials. The students can also build such rooms as part of a class project.
3. Arrange on-line Latin immersion sessions in which your students can log in (maybe from home) and "speak" Latin to each other. Even better, make arrangements with other teachers so that your students can meet other Latin students and speak Latin to them. Set a time for a Latin session (maybe for students of a certain level) and advertise the time along with information about how to log into the VRoma MOO!

SOME GUIDELINES FOR TEACHERS

If you want your students to use VRoma, please contact us at vroma@vroma.org at least 2 weeks in advance of your first meeting to set up log-ins for everyone. For specifics about what information to provide, see Procedures for Bringing Students onto VRoma.

If you are looking for teachers and students to collaborate with, try writing to the VRomans list. Your message should contain your student's level, the kind of collaboration you are envisioning and the approximate time of day that the collaboration would occur (during school, after school). Of course, you shouldn't hesitate to contact teachers whom you already know and think would be interested. Ask them to write to vroma@vroma.org for a VRoma login. The address for the VRomans list is vromans@colleges.org. This is a moderated list, so your message might not go out right away.

If you plan to use a VRoma classroom with links to materials, be sure to start setting this up far enough in advance that you will be able to test it before students log in. If you plan to ask your students to build, you should contact Barbara McManus (bmcmanus@cnr.edu) in advance to get builder permissions for each student or group of students who will be building. If your students will be building in groups, it works best to have one “builder character” per group, to avoid issues of building ownership from complicating the process. This will be a character with builder privileges (and a permit!) that students in the group share (i.e. they all know the character name and password).