by Mireille de Biasi, Trémonteix School, France, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

In four secondary schools in the region of Puy-de-Dome, France, the third-year pupils (children of 14 years old) are given the opportunity to take three weekly fifty-minutes lessons of ancient Greek by the way of videoconferencing. During some of these lessons they work together with their teacher, using both video presentation and the electronic handbook. During others they work independently, only using the electronic handbook.
A teaching aid to study independently or with the teacher
It proved necessary to give a specific handbook to the pupils so that they could use and create textual and iconographic documents of quality, either during the lessons or when they have to work on their own. Pupils thus come to meet the Greek language and civilisation and get to learn the rules of iconographic study. They also have the opportunity to communicate with their teacher through email (allowing for spontaneous specific questions, or sharing files with practice exercises or evaluations) even outside lesson time. The use of a matching character-set table helps pupils to do their work using a Greek font. They do the main part of their documentary researches on the Internet.
Framework of the electronic handbook

The electronic handbook: a flexible and personalised tool

This handbook has been tested in classrooms (during standard lessons and in distance learning courses) for three years. The use of it reveals the pleasure pupils take in learning an ancient language while taking advantage of ICT (involving production and manipulation of documents, iconographic analysis on digital images, creation of working files, inter alia). The flexible framework of the electronic handbook enables the teacher to insert new documents or exercises. It also enables pupils to insert their own thematic files.