Syllabus – Assignments – Schedule– D2L – Home
History 1101: World History from Prehistory to 1400 with Jack Norton
2019-05-10 ONLINE ONLY STUDENTS: Please go to the first page our D2L course and take the the survey of instruction. Thank you!
2019-05-10 A short video on with reminders of how to operate in Omeka so you can build your exhibit. You can also watch it here.
2019-05-3 The Outlines are graded. Online students all received a few lines of guidance. Face to face students, we’ve already talked and will talk more on Monday. The grades reflect if you did what I asked you to do, create an outline. The grades do NOT reflect the probability of a good grade on a the final exhibit. Prewriting is a process, and y’all are doing it well. That said, much like if you stopped practicing an instrument after practicing once, your final project will reflect the work you put into it going forward.
The biggest opportunity right now is to refine your theses. In general, the smaller the argument you can make the better. For example, this paper will demonstrate that the invasion of Spain by the Berber armies in 711 yielded advances in sciences in Spain in the subsequent 200 years.
2019-04-26 I’m grading Numbers 1 right now and want to give a bit of feedback.
For the average age of death, you do NOT need to fear dying in the coming year. Having lived to age 34, you escaped the mode death age (1) which means your average mortality rate will be something higher, likely around 67.
Many students tied their explanation of why wheat prices operated as they did to our readings to our readings with robust answers. Well done.
2019-04-17 – Office hours are cancelled today so that I may attend a teaching awards ceremony. I recognize the counter-productiveness of cancelling office hourse so that I can go to a teaching event and I apologies.
2019-04-15 – Office hours this morning are cancelled for a job interview meeting. I will hold afternoon office hours as usual.
2019-04-11 Normandale has cancelled classes today starting at noon.
2019-04-8 I have added a citation exercise for this week. Please read the short introduction, watch the video, and take the citation quiz by this Sunday, April 14th. If you’ve taken the quiz before, you can take it up to 3 times.
2019_04_02 Class cancelled on April 3rd. I’m sorry, but I need to cancel class for April 3rd, Wednesday. I sent y’all an email explaining what to do. Stay well.
2019-04-1 – Office hours are cancelled today in the morning due to a committee meeting. My apologies.
2019_03_20 – Please do not wait until Thurday night to finish the Voyant assignment. The website can support multiple uses, yet we have 120 or so students, in my three courses. That many comcomittant searches will crash it. Thank you.
2019-03-19 If you’d Voyant to run faster and have your own computer (windows,mac, or unix [sorry Chromebooks don’t work- I’ve tried]), directions for setting up Voyant are here: http://docs.voyant-tools.org/resources/run-your-own/voyant-server/
You will need to have Java installed for this to run, but running the app from your computer will make it run much faster.
2019_03_18 There was a broken link for this week’s readings. I’ve fixed the link. Unfortunately, the fix came after you took the quiz. So, I’ve converted the two quiz questions on Christianity covered by the readings from the broken link into bonus questions. So, if you got them right, extra points. If you got them wrong, it won’t hurt your grade. I’ve restored the link so you have access to the information, both for my online class in our discussion and as background information for next week’s assignments for all.
2019-03-15 – Grades for Images 1,2, and Maps 1 and 2 are up.
Grading Notes:
Images 1: Overall, good.
Images 2: Some technical struggles. The paragraphs should be in the items, not in the collection. There appear to be items not in named collections, which means I couldn’t give credit for the work. Email me if you have produced work but have "0."
Maps 1: I exercised professorial perogative and graded this credit/no credit. This was technically the most complicated assignment, and given the snow, my face-to-face students haven’t always had the amount of faculty guidance I would hope. So, well-done all of you.
Maps 2 Lots of technical struggles and analytical struggles. Please reach out to me when you encounter issues. My face-to-face students did much better on this assignment, I suspect because the bar for accessing my expertise was lower. Usually there is not difference between face-to-face and online student work.
HISTORICAL NOTE: Octavian was empeoror from 27 BCE to 14 CE. Monuments created in the 2nd century (100 CE and older) can not have been inspired by him or his values, because he was not born yet. In addition, the presence of a historical marker means only that someone value it enough to that marker, not that all Romans valued a marker.
2019-03-6 Office hours for today, Wednesday are cancelled due to faculty meetings. Please email with questions.
2019-03-4 My office hours for this morning are cancelled. I will be back in my office this afternoon from 2:05-2:55 pm.
2019_03_03 The Digital Augustan Rome uses flash. If it does not immediately load for you, I recommend you use the Chrome browser. Once you’ve opened the web page, click on the icon/text directly to the left of the URL, which may read not secure or be a lock icon. This will allow you to open the settings for this website. Change the settings of Chrome to allow flash and allow popup and then reload the map. By clicking to the left of the URL you can adjust the settings of Chrome only for this website, which will keep you browser secure for the rest of your web work. Chrome runs flash inside the browser, so you do NOT need to download or update the Flash Player, which is security risk.
2019-02-20 Time 2 is graded. Some great reflections on how ancient law reflected on poverty in the pre-1500 BCE era. A couple of notes:
- I only give zeroes when I do not see work. If you have a zero but turned something in, please email as I didn’t see it (there were multiple records without names).
- The directions asked for you to name your own learning goal. The absence of this goal was the most common grading issue.
- Students who used the Normandale library website found the most credible website. Students who operated on the open web had mixed results, with some excellent sources. For the record, Encyclopedia Britannica is not useful for our course because it cites itself and mostly doesn’t list its authors. We have many better sources. History.com is just rubbish: no sources, authors, or reputation for accuracy. On the open web, those two are cited most often, and so warrant mention.
Face-to-face students: you have until Friday to complete this week’s assignment (Images II).
Stay warm, stay safe.
2019-02-12 All classes have their Bootcamp II grades up. Overall, the assignments were strong. I encourage you to review what you know about a thesis. Here’s a website that gives a brief overview of what are good theses. . I also encourage students to review the Markdown tutorial. You will need to write in Markdown for the remainder of the semester, so getting it right now has a big payoff as we go. The bigget challenge is when people stick spaces between square brackets and parentheses, which breaks the link you are trying to make.
2019-02-11 There was an Omeka error that would not let you turn on the WYSIWYG editor in Omeka to make a link. I found the error (a tricksy little plugin) and you can now edit HTML in the Dublin Core boxes in your items normally.
2019_02_01
ALL STUDENTS
One of your fellow students asked for guidance on how to email me. Here is a list of email guidelines. I’ve adapted it from a longer list of email guidelines created for the University of Minnesota. You guys are doing a great job of reaching out to me by email: keep it up.
ONLINE ONLY STUDENTS: Making our discussions better
I’m grading discussions for weeks 1 and 2. You’ll note that each week is worth 3 points. Guidance on how I grade is below. Because I haven’t given guidance on how I grade in great detail, I’m grading “lightly” the first three weeks.
Those who write exceptional posts or post their first post by Monday night (and there are many) may receive a 3.1 out of 3.
Please respond to the first thread (whoever writes first) of the discussion. Creating your own thread breaks up the conversation into silos, and I’m hoping for more big-tent conversations.
The first line of the post prompt will always include how many times you must post to receive full credit. Please try to make our first post before Wednesday night at 8 p.m. to allow for a full discussion. Three posts in a row at 7:50 Friday night is a monologue, and doesn’t help your fellow students.
A “post” is a single entry in the discussion board. Two posts will require two separate entries. For everything in this class, doing the minimum earns a passing grade (a C). Discussion posts will be graded 1, 2, or 3.
A 3 indicates a well-considered post, written in complete sentences. It should reference both the weekly reading or image (specifically), as well as relate to other posts. A 3 entry will uses evidence to advance opinion in order to analyze or respond to someone else’s post. All posts should contain a minimum of four, well-considered and articulate sentences. As well, referring to other student’s work shows you are participating in a discussion.
A 2 post has a strong point, but may not use the evidence or refer to other’s ideas. A 2 post may also be too short (a couple sentences) or too long (many rambling paragraphs) and lack a clear point. It may have a couple errors of usage, but not many.
A 1 post makes not a great deal of sense, but relates marginally to the topic at hand. It does not reference a specific source nor others’ posts. Quick “I think this is cool” or “what Fatima said” posts will typically earn a 1. As well, dropping in multiple posts right before the Friday deadline at 8 p.m. will earn a 1 as these are not contributing to a conversation, but merely offering short monologues for points.
Not posting earns a 0. I’ll grade as quickly as possible. Discussions will run from Monday until Friday night at 8 p.m. I’ll try to post subjects as early as possible even if the discussion board isn’t open yet.
Spell check your posts. It’s the little abc button in the bottom right. See it? Repeated failure to spellcheck or use of text language will earn lower discussion grades. You deserve a capital “I” not an “i.”
Most discussion posts will ask you to make an argument about a subject. An argument is an opinion based on evidence. This evidence comes from both primary and secondary sources, but also from your existing knowledge. For example, when arguing over the justice or injustice of a subject, you have an existing comparative model: modern U.S. and MN laws. Everything can’t be related to the present, but we don’t exist in vacuum. My best advice for useful and interesting discussion posts is: a. have confidence in yourself and your arguments. And b., be as clear as possible in your logic and your language. Historians are lawyers of the past: evidence and good judgment are our guides.
I participate in the discussions in different ways. Some weeks I chime in regularly, particularly with controversial subjects. Some weeks I’ll just ask questions to help move the discussion. Some weeks (rarely) I just assess and send private messages of encouragement to students.
One of your fellow students asked for guidance on how to email me. Here is a list of email guidelines. I’ve adapted it from a longer list of email guidelines created for the University of Minnesota. You guys are doing a great job of reaching out to me by email: keep it up.
2019_01_29 Unfortunately, I will not see our 8 am class this week. So, 8 am students please email me from your Normandale email account with the subject "history-1101-8am" in the subject line. You do not need to include any content or message. This will be your response document this week and help ensure for me that you are well-connected to our course by email.
For face-to-face students: Because I design the course so that you have access to computers in class, and we have snow days, I’m extending the deadline for this week’s Time 1 assignment to Friday, February 1st. This should allow those without home computers to use computer labs on Thursday and Friday to complete the assignment.
Also, please remember to put your learning goal in your text box. Putting your name in your title makes grading easier for me in addition to the text box: thank you!
Stay warm!
2019-01-29 All students, including the 8 am students for whom we had no class today, can get started with the Time 1 Assignment. An invitation from Omeka should be in your Normandale email. Please check the junk/spam folder too.
For my face-face-to-face students: please be prepared to show me the following in class:
- That you can log in to your Normandale email.
- That you can log in to a cloud server, such as your Office 365 account. Alternatives are dropbox or google drive.
2019-01-24- Time 1 Assignment (Week 3) I’ve loaded the Time 1 Assignment so you can review it. I have to load all the students into the website we’re using (Omeka), which I’ll do Friday ~~morning~~ . So, online only students will be able to login to Omeka to start working on the assignment Friday night if you wish. Face to face students, we will review the assignment on Monday and work on it in class Monday and Wednesday. UPDATE: Online only and my 8 am classes have been loaded into Omeka.
2019-01-24 As requested from one of your fellow students last night, here’s a model for your answers.Note I’m using a codeblock in Markdown so you see the actual Markdown rather than the rendered HTML version of it.
1. Answer to question one in a complete sentence.
2. Answer to question two in a complete sentence.
6. The source I would use is X. The quotation I found useufl was ["this quotation"][1]
[1]: http://URL_of_the_article.comHope this helps.
2019-01-16 Here’s an explainer video of how to use our web pages. I created this for my online 1101 students, and it will be a useful review for what I covered in class for my face-to-face students.
2019-01-19 QUIZZES DUE: This Sunday at 8 p.m. your first two quizzes are due. The first quiz is on the readings for Week 2, as listed in the schedule. The second quiz is on the differences between primary and secondary sources, based on the web page of the same name linked in week 1.
2019-01-15 With apologies, I have a sick family member and need to be away from Normandale on Wednesday, January 16th. I will post more to guide you in learning about our course asap. WEDNESDAY CLASS IS CANCELLED.
2018-08-26 – This course page is where I’ll provide useful guidance for the course. For example, I may remind you of upcoming due dates or give hints for how to work through a particular assignment.To start our course, read this first. You can also login to our D2L page to look at the gradebook and assignment folder structure. Welcome to our course:)
