By: Henry V. Bender, Ph.D., Elizabeth B. Blossom Chair of Humanities and Instructor of Classics
The technology available at The Hill allows me to store scanned images of archaeological sites and their details so that I can display them for my students in my humanities and classics classes. This permits access on the student’s time, allowing them to study these images and assuring earlier mastery of data and fuller comprehension. In the study of painting, the computer and its LCD projector align comparative sources so that a student can see Michelangelo’s David alongside that of Donatello, or he or she can see the design compatibility between the Piazza San Marco in Venice and the Forum of Trajan in Rome. When my students write essays, they e-mail them to me; I collate their essays, creating a large file which I send to the entire class for peer analysis. In class, I project a student’s essay and rewrite and correct it with the entire class as a participating witness. This allows students to advance quickly in their writing style. The same expediency attends sentences and paragraphs in Latin and Greek composition. Also, through maintaining contact lists, I am able to keep my syllabi current, to remind my students of critical dates, and to stay in close contact with each of them.