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Teacher Review for Britannica Kids: Ancient Rome
A pocket encyclopedia on ancient Rome...but not much more
Learning Scores
Classroom feedback
My Students Liked It
No
My Students Learned
Yes
I Would Recommend It
No
Setup Time
Less than 5 minutes
Great for
Homework
Individual
Knowledge gain
Individual
Knowledge gain
Great with
General
How I Use It
The Ancient Rome app seems to have little practical application in the classroom.
As a pocket reference it provides a wealth of easy-to-navigate information on ancient Rome, but the additional features add little to its educational value.
Other than its portability,
it has no advantages over the many high-quality sites on ancient Rome that are available for free online.
My Take
The Britannica Kids: Ancient Rome app is well organized and easy to use.
The heart of the app is a collection of articles on a variety of topics relating to ancient Rome, including the Republic, the Caesars, gladiators, art and architecture and mythology. These articles are well written and go into more depth than one would expect for a phone app.
Key words are linked to definitions, but there are no links within the articles to direct the reader to additional information within the app or on the web. Each article is accompanied by a set of images with nicely informative captions.
There is also an A-Z catalog on the Roman gods. The rest of the application seems mostly superfluous: images can be turned into jigsaw, magic square or matching puzzles.
A handful of images are linked to their locations on a map, and a ten-question quiz hardly seems worth the trouble.
