by the Helios team: Sophie Van Esch, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , Guy Cherqui (FR), This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and Alain Meurant (BE), This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .
1. A Franco-Belgian collaboration linking secondary schools and universities

1.1 Goals
The HELIOS project was born out of a collaboration of the LOG (open Lycée of Grenoble, part of the Academy of Grenoble, France), and the Catholic University of Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL-LLN) in Belgium. This collaboration began after a meeting in Grenoble in February 2005 and has been formalised in a document signed by the Rectors of the two institutions. It aims to elaborate and distribute pedagogical content to promote classical languages on the web.  Its intended products will involve new technologies, supporting new ways of learning.

1.2 The French partner (pedagogical contents):  Lycée ouvert de Grenoble (LOG)
LOG is a body concerned with distance learning for a specific public, facing limitations of time availability (due to training schedules, medical conditions, etc) and space (such as working in hospital wards, or specific training locations). Within the Academy of Grenoble, the mission is to organise the teaching of classical languages in schools where they are threatened by disappearance or reduction of time allocations because of low student numbers. Learning activities offered by LOG are based on five principles:

• Alternation of class teaching with distance learning.  Courses are not designed for independent learning but directed under the supervision of a teacher.
• Close links between the various parties involved (teacher, student, course designer).
• Modular courses, containing several levels, each element being relatively independent from the whole.
• Readable content so that the teacher can take what s/he needs for her/his course.
• Interactivity, to render the material more attractive and less tedious, to relieve the teacher from the burden of activities that the computer can handle, in order to let him/her focus on the essential parts and to allow for the repetition of exercises.

1.3 The Belgian partner: UCL-LLN
The projects “Itinera Electronica” and “Hodoi Elektronikai”, designed at the UCL-LLN by the department FLTR/GLOR (Greek, Latin and Oriental languages at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters), are using new technologies to afford practice of classical languages.  This uses textual databases, but also follows pedagogical pathways and uses interactive lessons supported by numerous software applications, both online and offline.

2. The Latin and Greek courses HELIOS-LOG

2.1 Design of the Latin and Greek courses
The Helios project has an online presence at http://helios.fltr.ucl.ac.be/.

• The designers-teachers of the courses have an FTP access to the server Neptune at the UCL where the course material is hosted.  So these teachers are in charge of the creation of pedagogical contents, their conversion to HTML, and their upload online.
• A common framework has been agreed upon, the “home page with menu” of each course, which specifies the common architecture for each course.
• Courses are based both on textual material extracted from the database Itinera Electronica-Hodoi Elektronikai, but also on different tools and applications developed within these projects, including online grammar, morphological analysis (online and offline), vocabulary listings, exercises, thesaurus…
• Once designed, these courses undergo validation by the pedagogical advisors in France (Guy Cherqui, Inspector of the Academy) and in Belgium (Alain Meurant, University Professor at the UCL).  After validation, the courses are officially put online and announced in the weekly Actu’Itinera digest by Jean Schumacher (http://pot-pourri.fltr.ucl.ac.be/itinera/actualites/default.htm).

Several Greek courses, already designed and validated, are now on trial in schools. These include:
séquence I, Premiers Pas vers la Toison d’or :
http://helios.fltr.ucl.ac.be/vanesch/ARGOS/default.htm
séquence II, Fables d’Esope :
http://helios.fltr.ucl.ac.be/vanesch/ESOPE/default.htm
séquence VI, Le Mythe des individus de forme ronde :
http://helios.fltr.ucl.ac.be/vanesch/PLATON/default.htm

A Latin course already designed and validated, is now on trial:
Quatre moments de la passion amoureuse : Sénèque, Catulle, Tibulle, Virgile
http://helios.fltr.ucl.ac.be/vanesch/PASSION/default.htm

2.2 Learning scenario
2.2.1. Management of face to face teaching and distance learning
Latin courses to be implemented in the year 2005-2006 are aimed at the level première (16-17 years; 5th year of Latin in France). Greek courses to be designed and implemented in the year 2005-2006 are aimed at level troisième (14-15 years, beginners), and deuxième (15-16 years, first and second year of Greek). 

These courses are designed to include a one hour traditional lesson with a teacher (without computer support), mainly focusing on language, analysis and interpretation of the text (translation and literary commentary), complemented by two hours of computer-aided activities where the student works autonomously (with no teacher present, either at school or at home, if they have internet access).  These activities are supposed to:

• Prepare texts for classroom work by documentary research, exercises of lexicographical nature, questions regarding the analysis of the text, auto-corrective exercises… in order to optimise the single hour of traditional teaching.
• Elaborate the study of the text by relevant documentary research, but mainly by extra reading assignments, auto-corrective exercises which aid the recall of vocabulary and grammar, study of iconographic documents, audio-visual documents etc…

2.2.2 Management of independent learning and the electronic student-teacher relationship
The activities given to the student during her/his independent learning time are divided in two categories:

• Auto-corrective tests designed to assist recall and revision.
• Questions or exercises for which the students have to post their answers on the discussion forum or over the net to their teacher (with the applications “Ardoise virtuelle” or “analyseur”, for instance).

2.2.3 Management of digital and paper-based documents
For her/his independent activities, the student has at her/his disposal online reference documents and research tools, but also printed documents (printed grammar, detailed schemes of work to be done, as provided by her/his teacher).

2.3 Guidance of the teacher by the course designer
This can be done as well at a distance (by email or telephone) as face to face (in school, with or without students).  Technical as well as pedagogical advice can be given on how to use the material most efficiently.  This is a totally personalised approach.

2.4 First experiments in schools
The new LOG-Helios style teaching formula (One hour taught, two hours independent study) is being trialled during the year 2005-2006 at:

• Collège Le Masségu de Vif at troisième level (Greek beginners)
• Lycée de Tournon at deuxième level (Greek beginners)
• Lycée Camille Corot de Morestel at deuxième level (Greek beginners)

Some Helios courses are trialled occasionally in:

• Lycée Vaugelas de Chambéry at deuxième level (Greek beginners), at première and deuxième level (Latin)
• Lycée Pablo Neruda de Saint-Martin-d’Hères at première level (Latin)
• Lycée M. Gimond d’Aubenas at première level (Latin)
• Collège Lariboisière in Ardèche at troisième level (Greek beginners)

3. Other Helios activities
3.1 Franco-Belgian Reading challenge
The idea is that two groups of students, one in a Belgian school, the other in a French school, should have a reading challenge concerning a Latin or Greek text. This has 4 steps:

• Reading and detailed study, with the teacher, of a Greek or Latin text (a different one for each of the two groups) taken from Itinera Electronica or Hodoi Elektronikai.
• Students of one group prepare questions and exercises to be answered by the other group concerning the work they studied themselves, using the resources at their disposal. The idea is to oblige the other group to skim through the text using the questions and exercises as a guiding “thread”, and as such to share in the reading experience. Students of the other group do exactly the same with their text.
• Students then read the text of the others (to be prepared for their questions).
• Exchange of the questions, discovery of the questions of the opposing team and an attempt to answer the riddles prepared by them, so as to create a reading experience of the other text.

A first concrete trial is currently being undertaken by a French class from Lycée Vaugelas à Chambéry and a Belgian class from Collège du Sacré-Coeur in Ganshoren (a Brussels suburb) with the involvement of teachers from both schools, naturally.

3.2 A Franco-Belgian translation tutorial
Here, the idea is to put two classes together (one from each country) involving students of different levels (Belgian fourth year of Latin, French second year of Latin) where the higher level students tutor the lower level during a translation exercise. The exchange takes place on a moderated forum guided by the teachers and works as described below.

Students are divided into groups (Franco-Belgian), and each group has its own space on the Helios forum where the students are members and the teachers are moderators.

The work is organised in four steps, repeated as often as desired during the year:

• The French teacher distributes a Latin text to be translated to her/his students and puts it on the forum. The French students prepare their translation and try to define their difficulties and formulate them as comprehensible questions.
• The French students upload their questions to their space on the forum so that their tutors in their group can learn about their difficulties.
• The Belgian students (the tutors) take note of the questions, and try to answer them without giving the full translation, but just by giving hints and analysis.  They post their answers to their crew on the forum.
• The French students learn about the answers, finalise their translation and hand it in to their French teacher.

A first concrete example of such collaboration is on trial at the time of writing between a class of Collège de Vif (France) and one of Collège Don Bosco de Woluwé-Saint-Lambert (Belgium).