Latin III Projects

The first submission this morning was from Dietrich on Dido and Aeneas. Please flip over to the website to download and look through his work, then come back here and comment. Remember that this is a process, and keep in mind what the stated objectives and evaluation standards are. There is lots of room for interpretation here. I propose to add something but not until after at least some of you have finished posting.
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10/15/08 - Can I just note one concern? Well, two actually. First a mention about timeliness and punctuality. While I am fully prepared to take deadlines cum grano salis, sometimes I think I am overly soft in this regard. This may be why we seem to be moving more slowly through the book etc. than we could be. Ideally, comments were to be flowing in beginning after all the submissions had been posted last Wednesday. Most of the drafts came in since then. A week has gone by and while most have arrived, it is only now that the comments are coming, and those not in a torrent but in a trickle [i.e., only from one student, thank you Maggie]. Can we do better than this? Second, a reminder about the underlying or overarching purposes behind this work. It may not have been put terribly well in my project description two weeks ago, but this is how I phrased the "learning objectives":

• To learn as much as you reasonably can about the characters of your couple and the events in which they were involved. This is in the nature of a bunch of facts.
• To begin to see, grasp and start playing with the ideas, concepts, perspectives behind the stories about these characters and their circumstances.
• To start noting how these stories and legends have played a part in the development of Western Civilization.
• To begin considering what can be learned from them about the human condition.

We seem to be stuck on the first point. Perhaps the medium is limiting as regards the other three, and maybe it is unclear what sorts of inquiries those other three point to. Think about the attitudes and beliefs of the culture in which these stories were told. Think about subsequent literature, art and music. Think about seeming constants in the lives of human beings: emotions, attitudes, behavior.

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10/23/08 - Okay, we've discussed some of the problems with this project, problems at least from my perspective. I've distributed copies of your slides with my notes, primarily on grammatical matters, with some accuracy issues indicated, as well as a few suggestions for pursuing aspects of the subjects in more depth. At this point, there's not much more I can reasonably expect than that you address at least the matters I've pointed out. We can consider together early during the second marking period how to improve the scholarship of these projects, both as to the nature and quality of the work you do on them and the utility and significance of the products resulting from your work. In light of the impending end of the marking period, consider third period Tuesday your deadline. Pax vobiscum sit.