In Operation LAPIS, you play as an operative on a team with other operatives. Together, your team controls a young person in the immersion-space of the Texto-Spatio-Temporal Transmitter, a simulation of the ancient world. Your task is to find, read, and analyze the LAPIS SAECULORUM (Stone of the Ages) in the world of the TSTT.

That is, you must learn to read, to write, and to act like a Roman: you must learn Latin.

LAPIS is appropriate for ages 12 and up, as long as the operative is committed to the material.

The program runs year round; it presents no problem, though, for individual students to miss units here and there, and a two-week vacation will not impede a student’s progress. Also, there are four holiday weeks per year (July 4th, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day, and Easter) when activity may continue if students wish, but no forward progress in the ancient world is made, and there is a review-week after every two missions–seven review-weeks per year. There are two due-dates per week; the time-commitment is about a half-hour a day, or two hours twice a week.

The answer is a bit complex, because there are two due-dates a week when a student is responsible for filing a post in a particular place. Other than that, the operation is completely asynchronous, as long as students log in at least twice a week, barring emergency. We find, however, that many students log in much more frequently to engage with the narrative and the materials.

There’s an instructor who plays as a special agent (aka Mission Control) of the Demiurge and provides help as the students work and collaborate with their teams. Mission Control’s involvement is a crucial part of the operation, and differentiates practomimetic courses from many other kinds of online learning; it’s also why Online LAPIS is so much more expensive than classroom LAPIS.

There are Latinity Points which Mission Control awards for progress, as a sign to the student of how s/he’s doing, but the real assessment is purely based on the students’ progress in the operation.

Yes! Parents may either purchase an account for themselves or share an account with a student. The operation is designed for anyone who likes to be creative with their learning, and loves the ancient world.

We don’t generally group siblings as a single character in order to let each operative spread his or her wings, but all operatives in the cohort are playing together, and collaborating as a larger team. If you see a need to keep your kids together, though, we can accommodate that.

Starting with the 1 Nov 2014 cohort, the cost will be $40 per student per month for the first student in a household and $35 per student per month for any additional students in that household. Note that there are no hidden costs in Operation LAPIS: all operation materials are provided online. If students wish to play CARD-tamen outside the operation, real-world decks are available for purchase, but real-world decks are not required to play CARD-tamen as part of the operation.

The online version of LAPIS is intensively supervised and guided by an instructor, playing as Mission Control, who is an expert in the field of classics. Whereas classroom LAPIS is intended for Latin teachers to use with their students, online LAPIS gives you access to a real Latin teacher who is also an expert game-master, playing as an agent of the Demiurge.