Why these pages were created.   My desire to create this page comes as part of my overall interest in using web pages on the internet to provide exercises and tutorials to students as well as increasing the cyberspace presence of Latin and Classics.  Such javascript applications can provide a valuable resource.  Instead of requiring software to be purchased, or making students go to labs, teachers can create these exercises and allow students who own computers, have a internet account and a basic browser, to access these web pages at any time of the day or night. Plus a schools computer labs would not have to buy additional software to use these exercises.  In a time of constant financial pressure, when computers are often being hailed as part of the solution to the problems of primary and secondary education (an exaggeration at best), the use of javascript and internet resources can allow a relatively small number of teachers to work together to create exercises for the use of  hundreds of other teachers and many thousands of students. If a school with computers but still lacking in basic funding  must choose between Latin and another modern language, and its administrators see that their students could have access to resources in Latin without the school having to spend any extra money, such web resources could make a crucial difference in such decisions.  And there is also the potential for recruitment. My initial experiments with simple javascripts involved exercises for my mythology class.(see my myth metalink page at http://chss2.montclair.edu/classics/metalink.html). Not only have hundreds of my own students used these drills, but I have found that my review questions on Roman mythology and the Aeneid have, in the past year, received thousands of hits -- far more than my reviews of Greek myth. For example, as of May 29th, my review page on Roman Gods (http://chss2.montclair.edu/classics/romemyth.htm) has received 3100+ hits since April 30, 1998. Since the homepage for all these drills has received only 1921 hits, and some of those hits must have occurred before I was able to create the later Roman materials, it is clear that students found these pages via search engines. All these facts suggests to me that there might be thousands of students that would use the internet either to learn something about Latin or to hone their own skills and that it would not be hard for them to find these resources. The number of internet sites devoted to Classics and Latin is great and becoming ever larger. I suspect that such a web presence will help Latinists attract new students. I believe that such teach and drill yourself pages will add a valuable component to the overall presence of Classics and Latin  on the web.  As my interest and ability to use Javascript has increased, I have learned how quite simple scripts can be used to create interesting and interactive questions. To create such exercises is not that difficult. (to see how to create the simplest type of javascript button, that only requires you add only two or three lines of script to a web page, see http://chss2.montclair.edu/classics/_private/javascript/ITJAVAPAGE.HTML. Although I realize that teachers are terribly pressed for time, and that many simply do not like the whole process of learning via keyboard and monitor vs. book and pencil, I suspect there are many teachers out there that would like to create such exercises, but do not realize how easy it really is.  In the months ahead I intend, as I have time, to create more tutorials demonstrating how to borrow the javascripts I use and, by making substitutions, to create your own exercises. Again, one does not have to understand how Javascript really works to make these exercises. All one has to do is make careful substitutions -- the names I give for the buttons, the right answers, the responses to various answers, etc. can all be replaced. As long as you are careful to only replace my words with yours -- and not leave out any of the important code -- you will find the process quite simple.  If you have any questions or comments, you can mail me at alvares@mail.montclair.edu.

 This page is a mirror site of Alvares' Experimental Javascripted Teach Yourself Some Latin Page.
All materials are used here by kind permission.Back to Grammar Index