Experiment 14

Experiment 14

NOTE: If discussions of infectious disease cause you anxiety, I encourage you to focus on the Mongols, the Renaissance, or Mansa Musa.

Question this lesson seeks to answer: How can we write about history for the general public in ways that are both accurate and interesting? We are going to be approximating a public-facing blog, using our Experiment 14 discussion board.

Learning objectives. By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

  1. Locate a credible news story, pinterest pin, tweet or wordpress post about a contemporary (2020) issue about an issue related directly to the Mongols, the black death, the Renaissance, or Mansa Musa.

  2. Locate a credible primary source that explains the importance of the issue that you’ve identified.

  3. Write and post a blog entry on what issue you’ve identified and why it matters to a modern Minnesotan.

Write your post.

Your post should be fewer than 500 words, including all quotations and citations for any images.

You do not need to post images to earn an A, but you do need to post links to your contemporary source and your historical primary source.

Your post should do the following things:

  • Explain your two sources (one primary, one social media) to a general audience.
  • Explain how your two sources relate to each other
  • Explain what issue the two sources raise for you.
  • Explain what is interesting about this issue as it relates to a Minnesotan.
    Style guide: Your post should be conversational, much like you’d talk to a friend and a coffee shop. You don’t start conversations with “In this conversation I argue that . . .” or finish friendly chats with “In conclusion, points, a, b, and c all point to . . .” Nor do you speak in bullet points. You tell a story. See my example on the blog (all the way at the start of the blog) for conversational style.

Be sure to give your post a title.

Time to complete

I expect it should take you about an hour to find two sources that work well together, another hour to figure out how to write an interesting post, and two hours to write, edit, and publish your post.

Don’t miss!

This is as close to traditional history paper as you get in this class. 500 words is about two pages, which is not easy to write well. Give yourself time. When students have succeeded on this assignment in the past is when they broke it into chunks and worked and though about it over an entire week. Students that dumped a couple of hastily found sources into a rambling "this is what I think about things on the internet" have struggled to earn decent grades.

Grading Criteria

Student:

  1. Located a credible news story, pinterest pin, tweet or wordpress post about a contemporary (2019) issue about an issue related directly to the Mongols, the black death, the Renaissance, or Mansa Musa.

  2. Located a credible primary source that explains the importance of the issue that you’ve identified.

  3. Write and post a blog entry on what issue you’ve identified and why it matters to a modern Minnesotan.

  4. Blog post used standard English capitalization, punctuation and usage.

  5. Blog post demonstrated understanding of the historical topic covered.

  6. Blog post makes an attempt to relate a historical subject to contemporary life.