Students
will be required to submit 12 Weekly Projects during the semester.
The
goal of the Weekly Project requirement is to encourage curiosity
about the past, to develop the skill of connecting individual
pieces of history to broader historical processes, and to practice
research, writing, and presentation skills.
Projects must be on topics relevant to U.S. history between
1774 and 1974.
To complete the Weekly Projects students should download the Weekly Project Form. This a Microsoft Word form and you must use Microsoft Word in order for the form to work correctly. The form should be filled out and
placed in the Turnitin drop box. Detailed instructions
for downloading, filling out, and returning the Word form document
are available below.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE WEEKLY PROJECT FORM
Weekly Projects are due by 11:59pm on Fridays. No late projects
are accepted, but students are welcome to turn in projects early. The schedule of due dates is listed below.
All Weekly Projects must be written in your own words. Cutting
and pasting from the web is plagiarism; plagiarized Weekly Projects
are subject to the course academic honesty policy as stated
on the syllabus.
|
Requirements
To complete a Weekly Project, select a piece of historical
evidence, artifact, image, or fact about America from
the period 1774-1974 which fits into one of the following
categories:
a technological innovation
an extraordinary place
an extraordinary person
a famous New Yorker
a great speech
a great author or piece of literature
a great artist or piece of art
my favorite historical oddity
an ordinary household object
a great musician or piece of music
your favorite president
a famous court case
Research the piece of evidence or fact you have selected on
the world wide web. Prepare a 250-word description and explanation
of historical significance. Download an image. Fill out
the Word form document with the appropriate information.
Students must submit one project for each of the categories
listed above.
Because one purpose of studying history is to
expand our knowledge beyond our own lives, Weekly Projects
should not be about your own family or your own religious
beliefs or political views.
|
Instructions
for Researching the Weekly Projects
After you have identified the subject for a Weekly Project,
a good first step toward completing the project is to look the
subject up in an online encyclopedia. I recommend wikipedia.org,
which is an open source, advertisement-free site. I like wikipedia.org
because it is huge and because it is constantly changing, with
new and revised entries. Entries can be prepared by anybody,
but people all over the world read, dispute, add to, and revise
what is written. Wikipedia entries often include links to sites
with more detailed information as well as references to print
sources. Also, wikipedia.org entries often have images that
you can download and add to your projects.
Once you have some general background about the subject of your
Weekly Project you may want to find more detailed information.
You can always do a simple Google search, but chances are that
will bring up thousands, if not millions, of potential sources
of information. How do you select which sites will provide accurate
and usable information? Remember, not all web sites are reliable--just
because it is on the web doesn’t mean that it is true.
You need to know how to sort the good from the bad.
Here is a simple rule of thumb for finding reliable sources
of information for your Weekly Projects: don’t use web
site whose URL ends with .com. These are commercial sites whose
purpose is to sell you something. What you want are sites whose
purpose is to teach you something. These sites have URLs that
end with .edu, .org., or .gov. The quality of information on
these sites vary, of course, but they are generally better sources
of accurate historical information than commercial sites. You
can limit your search to these sites on Google by going to ADVANCED
SEARCH and setting the DOMAIN field to exclude .com sites. Click
here for screen shots on how to do a Google Advanced Search
Here are some history web sites that might have ideas or information
you can use for the Weekly Projects:
Digital History
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu
This excellent history site sponsored by the University of Houston
and the Chicago Historical Society, has lots of information
on U.S. history. You might want to look at some of the exhibits
on the site or visit some of the special topic sections. The
site has a large collection of historic speeches, historic newspapers,
music, and photographs.
History Matters
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/browse/manypasts/
This site from the Center for History and the New Media at George
Mason University has hundreds of historic documents (actually
999 at last count) in a section called “Many Pasts.”
Documents are listed by date, but there is a search function
that allows you to type in a specific term to see if there is
anything on that subject in the collection. Or you can use the
“Full Search” feature to find documents on selected
topics or time periods.
|
Instructions
for Submitting the Weekly Projects
To submit your Weekly Project, download this Word document form and save it to your desktop.
Fill the form out with the information you have researched,
add a picture or photograph to the document and upload the completed form to Canvas. On Canvas select the correct week and click on the button to upload.
|
