To create a tour the user must first become familiar
with the slides on the laserdisk. This can be done through the four different indexes
provided. The most direct of these is the Alphabetical index (Figure A).
De Italia is a multimedia application employing several indexes to search a laserdisk database of about 30,000 images which in turn can be organized into a variety of set "tours." Italy is the subject, defined in the broadest sense, stretching from Etruscan tombs to Giovanni Agnelli, the Fiat auto magnate and bankroller of this program. I would estimate that about 4,000 of the images directly relate to antiquity, though there are many more that would be useful for the Classics or Latin teacher (for instance the many photographs of Medieval and Renaissance painting and sculpture). Since the Roman "Perseus" lives only in the wistful dreams of a few, De Italia represents the Romanist's best bet for bringing computer technology into the introductory level classroom. In this article, after briefly describing the program, I will present several pedagogical applications that my colleagues and I have attempted, more in the hope that these will spur new ideas than that the reader will find them useful in her own teaching.
De Italia's usefullness centers on its "tour" function, or its ability to save pre-arranged series of slides with commentary on each slide. Our experience has shown that these tours are easier to construct and use than the Perseus 1.0 paths, though the tours cannot reach the sophistication of a Perseus path.
To create a tour the user must first become familiar
with the slides on the laserdisk. This can be done through the four different indexes
provided. The most direct of these is the Alphabetical index
(Figure A).
Users can either browse through this index by clicking on various letters at the top and scrolling through, or use the "find" function to locate a specific topic. If, for instance, they are interested in the Etruscans, they can click on "find," type in "Etruscans," and then by clicking on the various subtopics of Etruscans view the slides. When they discover a slide they want to save in their tour they click on the check mark at the bottom of the screen, and the slide is automatically saved in a marked slide folder like that below in Figure B.
When they have enough slides they will click on "Create Tour" which will send her slides into the Tour Editor (Figure C)
In this environment they can rearrange the order of the slides, type in
comments for each slide, add maps where needed, view the provisional
tour, and so on.
More casual users might want to browse through more general headings than the alphabetical index. There are three of these. If used together they will give a quick and broad survey of the contents of the database. For instance, if students were interested in the history of the Italian language, they could consult the Chapter index (Index D).
Clicking on "Humanities and Science" produces a subindex (Figure E)clicking on "Language, Literature and Theater" produces a further subindex (Figure F).
At this point students can browse through the various articles on the history of the Italian language, and if they want to, they can save slides into his marked slide folder.
The Chronological Index is another way to gain quick general access to the database (Figure G).
Users simply clicks on whatever time period they prefer, then click on Politics, Art, or Miscellaneous, and scroll through the holdings. Whenever they see something interesting they click on the topic and view the slides. As with the other indexes, any slide can be easily deposited in the marked slide folder.
Finally a series of pre-packaged tours that come with De Italia, as
well as all the new tours created, can be accessed through the Tours
Index (Figure H)
These provide another good way to introduce oneself to the database, and as with all the other indexes, any slide can be preserved in the marked slide folder.
De Italia presents us with two specific fields of pedagogical usage, assigned individual projects for students (creation of individual tours), or preserved tours to be used in class presentation.
Independent Projects
The most common student project we have tried here at the University of Richmond is one of several options for a final project in civilization courses. For instance, in Roman Art and Archaeology a student may decide to write a paper on Roman architectural motifs in Richmond buildings or do a tour on De Italia. To give an example of a successful tour, one student worked up a project on water and Rome. She gathered a series of slides ranging from a photo of the headwaters of the Po to geological charts to famous aquaducts in describing the role that water played in Roman civilization. We were pleased to find that the student not only learned a great deal about Rome and Italy from this exercise, she also learned how to make a successful and entertaining computer presentation. How important will this skill be for our students over the next 50 years?
In a Roman civilization course I have used some prexisting tours as "texts." For instance, at the end of the course I ask the students to view a tour called "Arabs in Sicily" in order to give them a concrete sense of some of the things that happened to Italy after Roman rule. Of course, if so inclined, a teacher could make her own tour, and require a class to view it on their own time. I hoped that such an assignmnet would draw students into exploring De Italia beyond the assigned tour, and that they would thus be able to get a more vivid sense of the appearance of the place they were studying, and gain some sense of independent discovery in a large class that might otherwise lack this.
De Italia can be useful in several ways in Latin courses also. One stimulating exercise is to assign the students to construct a tour with commentary in Latin. I read over an excellent example of this exercise composed by a University of Wisconsin student. He wrote on the career of Belisarius (the general under Justinian who "reconquered" the western empire). The images chosen vary from military artifacts to mosaics to wall painting, and combine with a stylish Latin text to attest that the student not only was deeply engaged in the project, but also enjoyed it quite a bit.
Another use of De Italia as a composition tool is to arrange a short tour without commentary, and ask the students in the Latin class to add a narrative commentary to the series of images (e.g. slides of bears, lions, sheep and wolves for beginning students). The goal in these compositions is to connect the language to its visual images. How many Latin majors graduate without ever knowing what an Italian wild boar, a common image in poetry, looks like? How many know the spectacular mosaics of Justinian's court in Ravenna?
Class Presentation
It is now fairly well known that computers can make the slide- lecturer's life more simple. Instead of daily sorting through the slide trays, and reshuffling of familiar slides from course to course, not to mention the dread of losing valuable slides when students review for tests, the teacher saves each slide lecture in something like this De Italia tour, and thus never needs to work with slides again. Of course, De Italia does not have nearly enough images in its database to represent any teacher's slide arsenal (Perseus 2.0 should soon suffice for most Hellenists), and therefore I would like to point out some advantages it could provide.
I have found this program most useful in topography sections at the beginning of broad courses. Rather than just pointing to a map and talking about high mountains here, fertile plains here, and major rivers over here, with De Italia, the instructor can give a vivid sense of how high and snowy the Alps and Appennines are, how difficult the Mediterranean coast can be for navigation, how lush the land of the Po valley is, and so on. I also like to present problems to a class regarding topography. For instance, I will show a slide of the Mediterranean basin, and ask how the students would have attacked Rome from Spain, if they had been Hannibal. To stimulate discussion a series of images of the various approaches can be shown, the Alps (Ligurian to Julian), the coast of Tuscany, the Adriatic coast and the Appennines to cross, and so on. After this students will propose various routes based on their new understanding of geography. Then I will show a slide of Hannibal's route to their wonderment, and we can discuss why all of Rome's most disastrous attacks came through the Alps.
There are many other problem solving exercises possible using De Italia with only the instructor's imagination making a limit. For instance, the teacher could show a series of slides of the Colloseum, various aqueducts, bridges, sewers and so on. Then ask the students what tools Romans used to make these impressive structures. They will usually over estimate and thus will be surprised when they see a slide displaying the tools of the trade in relief on a tomb. Of course, it is easy enough to lecture on Vitruvius and Roman building techniques, but the De Italia approach will probably be more lively.
Latin classes can do problem solving exercises with De Italia also. One very useful exercise is to display one of a series of Roman inscriptions, for instance a very readable dedication from the Villa Popilia, and ask the Latin students to edit the stone into a text using modern conventions. They will have to deal with word breaks, strange spellings (-eis in 3rd declension accusatives) and several simple abbreviations. My experience has shown that editing shows far greater command of the Latin language than translation. Also, this sort of exercise will give a class confidence that they can make sense out of very "real" Latin.
All those who are now operating Perseus have the necessary equipment to use De Italia, that is, a laserdisk player, and Macintosh with a hard drive (no compact disk player needed, though you will want to check if a very late Macintosh model will work). For classroom use the above can work (small classes), though a projector of decent quality will make the images far more useful. Our projector, of medium quality, cost about $ 5,000 though there seems to be a broad range of prices and quality. The program was produced by the Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli which did not aggressively market it in the US. American teachers are lucky that Jeffrey Wills, Classics Professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, took the initiative to order a sample stack of De Italias, and display the program at the American Philological Association's national meeting. Madison was kind enough to support the efforts of Wills and his assistant Geof Revard to distribute and support De Italia. Though I hope that some commercial interest will take on the marketing of such a useful program, as it stands now, it can only be ordered by sending a purchase order for $ 145 to: Videodisc Project, Dept of Classics, Van Hise 910, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, or call 608-262-2041.
A Roman "Perseus" is still the most remote of possibilities, but De Italia has a charm that no Classics program can match. Where else can you get a recipe for pesto, view lovely slides of the Sistine Chapel, ogle a classic- Ferrari, and plan the next vacation to Lake Como? In addition, it will make classes more lively, teach students how to manipulate the technology that will be a central part of their lives, and help teachers and students gain a more visual impression of the place we spend so much time reading and talking about.
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