Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Welcome to World History!

Hello everyone, and welcome to the class blog!

This blog will be used by all three of Kirsten's discussion sections in order to help you analyze your readings and prepare for discussion section. Why a blog and not email? There are several reasons. First, this won't clog up your inbox. Second, if each of you sends me comments and questions through email, the rest of the class won't benefit from your insights, but if you use the comment section, you will all benefit from each other. Third, this will help me see where you all are in terms of understanding the readings before section. Under semesters we meet less frequently than under quarters, so I'm hoping this will allow me to better help you succeed in the course. Fourth, I can post pictures, videos, and links here far more easily than on Carmen.

Below, I've posted the guidelines for using this blog that I handed out in class. I look forward to interacting with you both in class and online!

-Kirsten

GUIDELINES FOR THE CLASS BLOG:

1) Please approach this with the same academic seriousness that you give to a paper or an exam. Use proper spelling and grammar, and please refrain from offensive content or trolling. I am moderating posts and all comments that I deem unacceptable will be immediately deleted.

2) I will be using this blog to post thoughts on the primary source readings and activities. I will post these by MONDAY at 8pm. You are required to complete an activity on here ONCE A MONTH in September, October, and November. Please enter your response in the comments section for the applicable post. In order for you to get credit, you need to post before 11:59pm on Wednesday night. This gives me time to prepare for section. Your responses should be brief, about 5-6 sentences - enough to show me that you've done and thought about the reading, but nothing that takes you more than half an hour to put together.

3) Please identify yourself in your posts by (at minimum) your first name, your last initial and the class time (10:20, 11:30, or 12:30). If you feel uncomfortable putting even that information on the internet, please see me - we can come up with a pseudonym that you can use for the semester.

4) Please feel free to use these posts to communicate with each other (and me) about questions you might have about material presented in lecture or readings. I encourage respectful debate! In addition, you can post links in the comments to websites, articles, etc that you might think are relevant to the material that we're learning in class.

5) For anything time-sensitive, I will still use email. Please do the same for anything private or time-sensitive (reporting absences, questions on grading, etc).