Citation: School of Athens [online image]. (2014). Retrieved November 2, 2015 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_School_of_Athens.jpg
This is the picture I made in iPiccy. It takes Raphael's "School of Athens" and asks the students to think about who is depicted in the picture. Depending on the class/what my goal for the lesson is, I would use this in two different ways. The first would be as a writing prompt. I would use this as an introductory activity to help my students gain perspective on the culture of the Romans. The goal of the lesson would be to have students begin to understand that life in the Roman empire was not good for everyone. If you happened to be a property owning citizen it was wonderful, but as a woman, a slave, or a resident of one of the empire's provinces it was not easy at all. In this picture are depicted predominantly white, wealthy men. The only woman clearly depicted is the goddess Athena in armor, but we don't see anyone poor or a mortal woman. To get them thinking about this and to see visual proof of the people who were valued and lauded in Roman society I would put this picture up on my projector and have the students write about it for five minutes/one paragraph.
Similarly, I might use it as the focal point of an introductory discussion about perspectives when dealing with ancient history. Depending on where the discussion goes I could move into political bias, gender bias, or a more generic historical bias.
I really like the idea of using these sorts of pictures as a warmup/discussion activity in class. Using iPiccy lets me put the guiding questions right on the photo, making it a one stop focus shop, if you will. Also, as a Latin teacher it can be difficult to find pictures that are not copyrighted, in searching wikimedia commons, however, I was able to find many pictures right away that were of great quality that are also fair use. I think these sorts of activities will help my class and our cultural discussions!
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