web app version of D'Ooge (looking for feedback)

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fitzaudoen
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web app version of D'Ooge (looking for feedback)

Post by fitzaudoen »

I've been teaching myself web app development and, since learning by doing is best, have put it to work making a web app for learning latin.

Since making original content is out of my scope (and a bit outside my expertise), I've pulled all the content from Benjamin D'Ooge's "Latin for Beginners". I hope you'll find that made clear on the site. The content however isn't hard coded so I could just as easily replace everything with any other spreadsheet of questions and answers. I thought it would be neat to share it with the folks here, since this is the site that introduced me to D'Ooge's text several years ago when I started teaching myself latin. I've consolidated a few of the chapters (I have the first 15 chapters up divided into 11 lessons), and have shortened some of the lesson texts (mostly removing the parts that are mean't as in-class exercises). I also broke the dialogues and reading passages into additional translation exercises. I might add an additional module in the future specifically for those reading passages.

I'd like to get feedback from yall - how you feel about the interface/content, and what could be done to improve it. The idea was to make something similar in spirit to DuoLingo for Latin. My ultimate goal is to make something that folks would actually want to use, so critical feedback is vital.

This is still in alpha, so I haven't put up rigorous account validation, so feel free (and I would recommend) to use a made up email address and insecure password (i.e. something you don't use anywhere else). All the accounts will be deleted when I put out a beta version.

Here's the link: https://loquar.herokuapp.com/

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bedwere
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Re: web app version of D'Ooge (looking for feedback)

Post by bedwere »

It seems to work fine. Hopefully it will be useful to those who want to learn Latin.

PS

I typed a ligature and it gives me an error:
Type in the appropriate Latin words to complete the translation:
The farmers labor.
Agricolæ laborant.
Next Incorrect - "Laborant agricolae."
The same happens when I type a macron:
Type in the appropriate Latin words to complete the translation:
The girl is announcing.
puella nūntiat.
Next Incorrect - "Nuntiat puella."
Of course a beginner wouldn't type ligatures or macrons.

fitzaudoen
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Re: web app version of D'Ooge (looking for feedback)

Post by fitzaudoen »

bedwere wrote: Of course a beginner wouldn't type ligatures or macrons.
It's a good point though, thanks. It's really easy to use ligatures and macrons on an android keyboard, so I should probably expect folks to try it, especially since the latin to english does use macrons.

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bedwere
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Re: web app version of D'Ooge (looking for feedback)

Post by bedwere »

Another source of confusion could be u/v and i/j.

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