tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70230897726703544922024-03-08T07:28:14.781-08:00Teaching HistoryTeaching and studying medieval European historyDr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-48367377620194432632011-02-09T14:28:00.000-08:002011-02-09T14:28:50.734-08:00Shutting DownToo much to do or to little time, it comes to the same thing. When I occasionally have something to say about history, I'll say it over in what seems to have become my main blog, The Smiling Atheist.<br />
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Ciao.Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-79740223647914967532010-08-08T09:00:00.000-07:002010-08-08T09:00:32.200-07:00Historic London, and an airport Airports are everywhere the same. They're like cities, with their own power grid, water, etc., their own populations, even their own police. They are cities with only a single purpose, though, so they don't look like ordinary cities. Their central place function is different. I wonder if someone will write a comparative history of airports.<br />
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Few people can really know what they're looking at just by looking. London feels historic in part because there are plaques and signs everywhere telling you that this was the only building in the district to survive the Great Fire of 1665, or that the Victoria Embankment was built in part of provide a modern sewage system to the City. I've been in numerous other old cities and they don't do this nearly so well.<br />
The other reason why London feels historic is because we know the history. This manifests itself in two ways. First, England once ruled an empire, so many different nations and peoples have reason to know something about English history. Second, English-speaking people learned at least some English history in school; moreover, we learned English art, English literature, and so on. So in a list of fifty English names as compared to fifty German or French names, more of those English names are likely to resonant with the visitor. Learning that Mr. So-So was a noted 18th century Viennese novelist just doesn't have the same impact as learning that Jonathan Swift lived here.<br />
This is, I suppose, one reason why travel for the historian has a different dimension than travel for one ignorant of history. We get more harmonics on our internal strings.<br />
Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-88230837692057975602010-07-24T08:49:00.000-07:002010-07-24T08:49:25.905-07:00Traveling HistoryI'm back. What did I learn? Not what I thought I might.<br />
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After I returned, people naturally asked about the trip. It's not clear exactly what they wanted to know; the question was usually phrased thus: "so, how was your trip?"<br />
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This phrase had different parameters for different people. Close family, accustomed to seeing pictures and hearing fairly extended accounts, expected much the same. Co-workers, otoh, might be content with "it was really great" or brief expansions thereon. Even when people ask to see photos, the scope of the request depends on the requestor. Few want to see all 1500 pictures!<br />
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Then it struck me that I was being asked to write history. There was the event <i>qua</i> event: on such and such a date a cruise ship called at such and such port. There was the <i>experience</i> of the trip, which differed among the four individuals who went. Even among the four there were subgroups: two couples, so there were the individual experiences and the couples' experiences. Already we have a complexity that is rapidly being lost to memory as the days roll by.<br />
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Then there are the reports of these experiences (let us assume all are somehow written down). Each of the four of us have reported variously to various audiences by now. In addition, I'm writing a sort of "official" history that I'll publish as an e-book, complete with photos and perhaps video, of our trip. As the other reportings vanish, the e-book will tend to become the only surviving artifact, although it's possible that references to it might show up in someone's memoirs. And of course there will be the document trail of purchases made, passenger manifests and the like that some future historian could use.<br />
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So, what did I learn? I learned -- let us say I experienced -- how history gets made. It's a mundane sort of lesson, but it carries more impact for me personally because I stumbled upon it myself, rather like a tourist who stumbles upon some statue or cafe and is delighted with his discovery. Well, the locals would say, so what? That's been there for years!Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-76087794133737243122010-06-17T12:45:00.000-07:002010-06-17T12:45:08.756-07:00A Cruise in the BalticWhat's the relationship between studying and teaching history, and travel? I've traveled before, but I've not reflected on the question.<br />
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Whenever I travel people say something along the lines of "Oh, you're a historian, it must be so fascinating to travel to those places." I'm polite so I say yes it is.<br />
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In truth, when I travel, I'm just a tourist. I gawk and snap and sample and spend like any other tourist. My knowledge of European history sometimes influences my choice of destinations, but in this case choice is right off the table. I'm going on a cruise on the Disney Magic, where everything is packaged and bundled and carefully concierged. While it's easy to carp and find ways to deride such a tour, I'm determined to find unexpected benefits. One such is this matter of history and travel. Or, I should say, history and touring, since one can travel for many reasons that leave on the blinders.<br />
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So, I intend to go on this tour as a historian. Not just a medievalist, mind you, for that would cause me to miss too much and some of our excursions are decidedly non-medieval. Rather, as a historian, I want to witness what I see, be it medieval or modern or even post-modern. My organizing principle is to use this exercise as a way to capture information, impressions, sights for my students; to bring back from this trip some insight or material that I can share with my students -- or, I suppose, even with friends and family -- as something specifically historical. Something that would be missing were I not a historian.<br />
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I have no idea if there is anything to be gained by this exercise, but I'm quite sure that I won't know but by trying. I'm reminded of the anecdote told by Marc Bloch of his mentor, Henri Pirenne. This is recounted in "The Historian's Craft" so go there to read the correct account. My recollection has it that the two were in Bruges or some such place and Pirenne was looking at this or that modern building, commenting on them. Bloch wondered why the great man wasn't admiring the medieval stuff. Pirenne said that he was a student of human activity, or words to that effect, and that he would be remiss as a historian if he only looked at one slice of what society produced. I hope to be in the same spirit, even if I cannot be in the same company.Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-824746607901948592010-06-03T12:23:00.000-07:002010-06-03T12:23:56.183-07:00BlackBorgHere is how teaching decisions get made in This Modern Age.<br />
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I had a perfectly good discussion board called WebBoard. But it was expensive. And I was the only one using it. So the university discontinued it.<br />
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So I went off-campus and started using phpBB. This was a good board, but it was off-campus and I couldn't control its reliability.<br />
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So this next semester I'm going to start using BlackBoard to handle discussion and maybe to offer quizzes. Still unsure on that second one.<br />
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Already I am seeing the effects, after only one day of use. Any sort of management system, be it Learning Management or Content Management, behaves in a Borg-like fashion. You can't just use this piece or that piece without having other consequences. So you make this adjustment and that accommodation and now you're using even more of it.<br />
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Specifically, once I had set up the forum, I had to make it clear to the students that this is the *only* part of the course to be found here in BB. So I had to post an Announcement. To cover bases, I had to post a couple other "not here but over there"-type messages.<br />
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But, of course, students will naturally want to check their grades, so now I have to use the grading system provided by BlackBorg. Which means I have to learn it, invest in it, adjust to it. Maybe even tailor assignments to it.<br />
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It's the tar-baby of software.<br />
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Fall semester is a summer away. I'll be teaching a 100- and a 300-level class, so I'll get the full experience. I'll chronicle my impressions here.<br />
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The best way not to be assimilated is to make oneself indigestible to the host.Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-21735989377924030682010-04-02T19:27:00.000-07:002010-04-02T19:27:46.810-07:00Setting requirements for discussionPlenty of professors teach online now.<br />
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Er, that is, plenty of professors have scanned an armload of articles into PDF and upload them to Blackboard or some other learning management system, and have students post a few times to a "discussion" board. You will note that there is no teaching involved in that exercise.<br />
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Let's assume you're after more than that, and that you want your students truly to discuss history as a part of the course requirements. How do you accomplish that? The answer is simply stated but difficult to execute: set clear requirements and stick with them, and model behavior. This post concerns the first part.<br />
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Sometimes when I tell a colleague that I require of my students three posts a week, the ol' eyebrow goes up. It's not said, but the thought is "only three"? Yep, only three. It's a matter of mathematics.<br />
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My expectation is that every student reads the posts of all the other students. If there is a class of thirty students, that means ninety messages a week (well, eighty-seven) to read. Add to this the posts from the teacher and the student is looking at 100 to 120 messages a week to read. No, I don't think they read all of them either. But they do read most!<br />
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Raise this to four messages a week and now you're at 150 or more messages a week. Cut it to two and it drops to eighty or so a week. Now, the real numbers are less because you can always count on the under-performers and those who drop the course. The point here is that the requirement is very much driven by how much it is reasonable to expect your students to read. If your class is larger, posts per week can go down; if smaller, the figure can increase. To put it another way, the requirement is driven not so much by what it is reasonable to expect the students to <b>post</b>, it's driven by what is reasonable to expect them to <b>read</b>.<br />
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Beyond this we have matters of form and content and other considerations. I'll leave those for another entry.Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-90893907690810634552010-02-03T08:19:00.000-08:002010-02-03T08:19:41.263-08:00What's a Syllabus?Every semester I get an email from the department asking me for my syllabus. What the devil do they want from me?<br />
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A syllabus used to be easy to define: it was that piece of paper, or stapled pieces of paper, that the professor handed out the first day of class. Typically a syllabus had certain information in it, but really there was little consistency between professors and across disciplines. The one really consistent thing about the syllabus is that it was the first thing handed out in the semester. Anything that came after was just a "handout". Curious terminology.<br />
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When I began teaching virtual classes two things quickly became evident. First, that the "syllabus" took its character in part because of the synchronous nature of f2f teaching. It was the sequence, not the content, that characterized the syllabus. This was rendered irrelevant in a virtual class where *everything* was available from the first day. This forced me to re-think what a syllabus might be.<br />
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The second thing I realized was that a traditional syllabus was bounded by the medium. There were only so many pages you could hand to a student on the first day without scaring them to death, so a syllabus tended to be brief and summary. The "handouts" that followed were often elaborations on the syllabus--guides to writing, resources, research, additional reading, and so on. These could have all been handed out the first day and indeed in some disciplines I've seen a whole packet handed out and called a syllabus.<br />
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Online, though, there are no real boundaries. A "syllabus" could be as many pages as you liked. I came to understand that students do want a single-page (web page) summary of assignments. They want to know when the due dates are and what is due. My syllabus therefore tends to be very brief but highly linked. The items that are due, those need explanation, right? And due dates should be supplemented by a statement about late assignments and make-up policy. The term paper assignment needs explanation about my expectations, maybe a list of possible paper topics, and so on.<br />
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How much of that is the "syllabus"?<br />
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All of it. None of it. I've had semesters where I didn't use the word at all. There was a Schedule of Assignments, list of Required Readings, a Study Guide, etc., each as its own page.<br />
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But I'm back to a Syllabus page for one simple reason: to keep the History Department off my back. It's not their fault; it's the fault of the accreditation people. They're the ones who require a syllabus for every course, every semester, every teacher.<br />
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Here's the amusing part: they want paper. Seriously. The accreditation body wants a piece (or pieces) of paper for every course. That piece of paper needs to be titled "Syllabus". What's on it ... eh.<br />
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So our poor secretary has to dun the faculty every semester. She has to have a table where pieces of paper collect which she dutifully files into boxes. And for that jerk Knox, she has to print out a page.<br />
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It's bad enough she has to do all this, she shouldn't have to print out multiple pages. She shouldn't have to follow links and figure out what constitutes a syllabus. So I cut her a break and I have a single page with the word Syllabus at the top in nice big letters so she can print it, file it, and forget about it.<br />
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And that's what a syllabus is, around here.Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-6111203415868020142010-01-18T19:47:00.000-08:002010-01-18T19:47:48.770-08:00Sounds Like...Bloopers in history essays abound. They have been collected by teachers and have found their way on to the Internet. Once upon a time I collected some myself, but several years ago my attitude changed ... without my noticing, as attitudes will sometimes. I can't pinpoint a date but I can pinpoint the change in perception and its cause: it was when I switched decidedly from teaching live to teaching online. This may appear at first to have nothing to do with laughing at student bloopers but bear with me.<br />
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One of the striking differences between teaching live and teaching online is the chalkboard. Okay, whiteboard. Whatever you wish to call it, they all serve the same purpose: to put words up for students to see, read and record.<br />
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In a live lecture I speak names and terms that often are quite literally foreign to my students--Greek, Latin, German, French, and so on. So, like every teacher for generations, I wrote those hard-to-spell words on the chalkboard. Some teachers even make handouts. Nowadays, maybe they even make web pages. Whatever the format, the purpose was the same: students could <i>say</i> the words, but they could not write them.<br />
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In a virtual class, though, I never speak the words, and the problem my students face is just the opposite. They can spell the words, but they have no idea how to pronounce them. As a consequence, I have audio files embedded in my essays pronouncing various words.<br />
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Which brings me back to student bloopers in essays. First off, I just admit, some people simply have trouble spelling. Let's leave that aside. Consider that for most student essays they are required to write on a topic about which they've had no advance notice, and must write for a fixed length of time without notes (aside: this is something professional historians <i>never</i> have to do, so one must wonder what skill is being tested here), so there is pressure on the student, which doesn't lead to meticulous thinking.<br />
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So now look at a typical student blooper:<br />
"In the Olympic games they ran around and tossed the java.<span> </span>The victors won a coral <span>wreath</span><b>."</b><br />
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</b><br />
It's funny, no doubt, but look closer. They tossed the java. Here, the student means "javelin" but has very likely encountered that word only rarely in his or her life. In the pressure of the moment, s/he grabs for the first word that comes close in sound. The second example is even clearer. The student has rarely heard of a laurel wreath, but s/he has heard of a coral reef.<br />
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In both cases, the auditory and the written are being muddled. I don't see this as a blooper so much as I see it as a commentary on the teaching medium. Students are <i>told</i> history but then are asked to <i>write</i> history. There are bound to be gaps in the translation. I have no doubt at all that if my students, taught exclusively via the written word, were asked to take an oral examination, they would come out with similar verbal mistakes. I can picture professors editing sound files to produce compilations of muddled pronunciations.<br />
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I'm not being dour. I still smile at a line like "Jesus was punished with thirty-nine lasses". But when I'm done smiling, I see the thing for what it is: a mistake in transcription from audio to text.Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-40968644975190144802009-11-16T15:16:00.000-08:002009-11-16T15:18:40.879-08:00History BlogsShamelessly cribbed from "In the Middle" this list of medieval history blogs. Current as of this writing.<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 15px; "><ul><li><a href="http://modernmedieval.blogspot.com/" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; ">Modern Medieval</a></li><li><a href="http://unlocked-wordhoard.blogspot.com/" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; ">Unlocked Wordhoard</a></li><li><a href="http://stephanietrigg.blogspot.com/" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; ">Humanities Researcher</a></li><li><a href="http://blogenspiel.blogspot.com/" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; ">Blogenspiel</a></li><li><a href="http://theruminate.blogspot.com/" style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; ">The Ruminate</a></li><li><a href="http://quodshe.blogspot.com/" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; ">Quod She</a></li><li><a href="http://tenthmedieval.wordpress.com/" style="color: rgb(51, 102, 153); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; ">A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe</a></li></ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Each is well worth a visit. Each is well worth a long visit, especially if you are a student in the field, but also if you're an interested amateur or a working historian.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><br /></div></span></div>Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-42555141099135303312009-10-06T14:26:00.000-07:002009-10-06T14:42:07.139-07:00Why I don't put a single lecture into a single filePeople ask me about this, so I'll answer. They want me to put all of a single essay into a single file.<div><br /></div><div>I ask: why?</div><div><br /></div><div>Because, they reply, it's easier to print. I also suspect an answer is: because it's easier to copy. I've never heard any argument that doing so would improve learning.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have no interest in making the information on my sites easier to print. My essays are designed to be read online and take advantage of that environment. This includes ancillary tools such as sound files to help with pronunciation and images like maps that help with understanding, or even just pictures to help with visualization. While the images can be printed, they are never as clear, and in any case you can't zoom them; sound files, of course, don't exist on paper.</div><div><br /></div><div>I actively discourage such habits as highlighting, which is how some students think studying happens, so that's another reason not to facilitate print.</div><div><br /></div><div>I do suspect students, especially public school students, of copy/pasting entire passages. It's a near certainty. Putting everything in one file merely makes that job easier, and I have interest in doing that. Beyond that, however, I know for a fact that other sites duplicate my content without permission, and I want to make that task difficult for them as well.</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, there's an issue of scope here. If it makes sense to put all the pages of an essay into a single file, why stop there? Why not all the essays in the entire site into a single file? Heck, why not all my classes, just one great long file? On the contrary, if anything, I'm moving towards increasing the granularity of the information.</div><div><br /></div><div>Are there any benefits to my approach? Well of course there are.</div><div><br /></div><div>First is readability. I don't try to keep "above the fold" but I do try to keep pages relatively short. Within that very vague guideline, I try to make each page self-contained; in fact, my model comes from the very old-fashioned style of history books that would have inserted headings--not chapter titles nor even section headings, but indicators of a change in topic. Typically these would encompass only two or three paragraphs. I try to break each page at a logical point that would propel the reader on to the next page. Readability is, in other words, a consideration both in terms of screen reading but also in the rhythm of reading.</div><div><br /></div><div>Second is ease of reference. Discussion is important in my pedagogy and by breaking an essay into many pages I facilitate references, both in discussion and in papers.</div><div><br /></div><div>Third is findability. Search engines are happiest when each page is about a topic. By breaking an essay into many pages I can title each specifically and adjust keywords as needed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally is performance. Because I make extensive use of media, an entire essay in a single file would actually be pretty hefty, even by modern standards. I try always to be cognizant that my work is on a world stage, so I try to keep the footprint of any single page as light as possible.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-47186583335603056032009-04-10T13:53:00.000-07:002009-07-07T12:18:00.360-07:00Why Study History?Just about every textbook published feels compelled to say something about the uses of history and why (please oh please) students should study it. I'm here to let everyone off the hook. You don't need to study history. Society doesn't *need* history. My discipline has its merits, but it is a social luxury, adding value to society.<br /><p>What about the need to learn from the past?</p><p>Not important. We don't need to learn from the past. In fact, in most places and most centuries, most people had only a dim and deeply confused idea about their past. And they did fine. They made us. Lacking historians, people simply make stuff up. In fact, even with historians around, they make stuff up, because what we have to say is too nuanced and doesn't fit with their stereotypes.</p><p>Now, if you should happen to want genuinely to understand the past, then you need to learn the discipline of history. Not, mind you, read a bunch of books, but to learn the discipline. This is no small task, but it has its rewards. Those rewards accrue to the profession and to the individual; it doesn't do much for "society".<br /></p><p>Don't study it because it's "useful" in some way, because it isn't. A hammer is useful. History isn't a hammer.</p> <p>History doesn't have utility; history has value. You know, like art or friends or travel. These have value because they enrich our lives.</p> <p>With a hammer, once you get its utility out of it, that's all you get out of it—all you ever can get out of it. But with travel, friends, art and yes with history, you can return over and over. In fact, the more often you travel, the more often you turn to friends or art, and the more often you study history, the more you receive from it.</p> <p>That's way better than mere usefulness.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-17601737589319841882009-03-23T19:17:00.000-07:002009-03-24T20:18:18.114-07:00Cologne Archive CollapsesWhat a bitter irony that I happen to have chosen a picture (months ago) of Cologne! Here is a link to an article in <span style="font-style: italic;">Der Spiegel</span> (it's in English) about the collapse.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,613209,00.html">http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,613209,00.html </a><br /><br />Two people died in the collapse. How much archival material is permanently lost is hard to say, but there's been extensive water damage, so there's no doubt losses will be significant.Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-10846233607569158692009-03-09T10:25:00.000-07:002009-03-09T10:33:02.519-07:00Online ResourcesThe quantity of material online is getting truly overwhelming. With the exception of modern scholarship, which is still largely confined to print, I do believe there is enough material online for the teaching of any undergraduate history course. At least for European (and probably for U.S.). Really, for many areas, there's even enough to support graduate research, for an enormous number of archival collections are also coming online. Most are free, though some do require a subscription.<br /><br />The latest impressive resource I've found is at the Internet Archive. A search in their text collection yields an extraordinary treasure trove. True, it's mostly very old, as it must be out of copyright protection, but in some ways this is an important supplement, for these are the very works that tend not to appear on most library shelves.<br /><br />Now, granted, an 1850 history of medieval Germany is not where I would have most students begin. On the other hand, though, a search on "Reformation" turned up collections of source documents that included a collection of letters sent from English reformers to people like Heinrich Bullinger. You simply are not going to find those letters anywhere except in a specialist library, and then you may not be able to get the work via interlibrary loan, depending on its condition. Because it's online, though, I can make assignments into it for my students. These are voices my students would otherwise never hear.<br /><br />I encourage my peers to explore these resources. It does take a tremendous amount of time. Perhaps there's work to be done here, compiling references to specific online works (even down to particular pages or passages), in the same way paid scholars once collected materials for a printed collection of teaching resources.Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-85494437143963194292009-02-11T07:26:00.000-08:002009-02-11T07:36:30.879-08:00Speak UpHow do you get students to talk?<br /><br />It's as much a challenge in a virtual course as in a live course. The difference is that in a live course they have to talk with what they have in their brains at the time, whereas in an asynchronous environment, they can look things up and can discourse more intelligently.<br /><br />This can have a negative effect, though. The better students, able to consult with their texts, can post detailed and intelligent comments that can intimidate other students. Those other students might be shy, or they might be late starters, or they might simply be the sort that bristles at learned discourse. Whatever their reasons, they clam up.<br /><br />The only way I know to get them to talk is with both the carrot and the stick. The stick is the requirement. They must post N number of messages every week and their discussion counts for a significant portion of their final grade (I usually do around 40%). Not talking hurts. The carrot comes in the form of progress reports where I can ask the non-participators how they are doing, if they're having problems, etc. Language that is supportive and inviting.<br /><br />Responses tend to fall into two piles. One is of the "yeah, I know" sort. They apologize and say they'll try harder. Sometimes they give reasons, sometimes not. The other type are those who say they can't find anything to say, or that they're intimidated, or confused as to what to say.<br /><br />For them, I've learned to provide aids. These come in the form of "study questions" tied to the source readings. Some day I may get ambitious and add study questions for the lectures and textbooks as well. I'd rather not, as I don't want to steer the conversation. I also encourage the student to ask questions, even if it's merely about a word or phrase they don't understand. I also encourage them to read the posts of others and to respond to those.<br /><br />After all that, there are still those who under-participate. A second progress report, stating bluntly that they're failing the discussion portion of the course, can help. But in the end, there are a handful who post 25 of the 45 required messages. Or 30 or 35. Well short. They of course get what they have earned.Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-11044756389626230902009-01-07T13:03:00.000-08:002009-10-06T14:47:28.715-07:00Scholarly works onlineMore and more serious scholarly work is being made available on the web. I talked last time about De Re Militarii, but that's just one example. I was browsing through Andrew Holt's Crusades Encyclopedia and found a page on William Urban, one of the leading authorities on the Baltic Crusades.<br /><a href="http://www.crusades-encyclopedia.com/williamurban.html">http://www.crusades-encyclopedia.com/williamurban.html </a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>That page has links to several of Urban's articles in various journals. There you can read about religion in the Baltic, the organization of armies, and even Teutonic Knights jokes.<br /><br />The same Encyclopedia has links to the works of other scholars, including Thomas Madden, Malcolm Barber, Christopher Marshall, and many others.<br /><br />The University of Wisconsin has "The Crusades" edited by Kenneth Setton, all six volumes of it. This work, done in the 1950s, is filled with excellent articles on a surprising variety of topics.<br /><br />There's even Michaud's history, written almost 200 years ago.<br /><br />And that's just the Crusades.<br /><br />The real message here is that there's a considerable body of work in just about every field. Not on every specialty topic, not by a long shot. Nor are the most important works necessarily online. But there's more than enough material for most any given course, even upper division (probably not graduate work, yet).<br /><br />All of which raises an interesting pedagogical question. Would it be possible to design a course, let's say a course on the Crusades, using *only* online resources?<br /><br />Certainly it wouldn't be ideal. Most of us would immediately say that our campus library is far richer in resources. Moreover, using on the Web would be designing a course around what happened to be there, not around what was best and most appropriate.<br /><br />But then I thought about that.<br /><br />First, don't we all find ourselves constrained by what happens to be at our campus library? Yes there's ILL, but I don't need to tell you the drawbacks of that, especially if you're on the quarter system.<br /><br />Moreover, it's been a long time since I could design around what was best and most appropriate. Ever since publishers started letting books go out of print left and right, it's been increasingly difficult to use the texts I prefer. Instead, I've had to design around what happened to be in print. So this idea that we currently make assignments into unconstrained resources is simply wrong. In which case, the Web is simply another constrained resource.<br /><br />I've done more than just think about this. Everything in my Western Civ course is online. I'm seriously considering moving my Crusades course to that format. The Late Middle Ages is problematic because most of the resources are hopelessly "Renaissance" in orientation. The Reformation is a mixed bag: great on primary sources, pretty good on secondary literature as long as it centers on religion or on a couple of specific topics (witchcraft, New World), but dreadfully thin in other areas.<br /><br />Still, it'd be interesting, even as an exercise, to design a course around what *is* there.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-50384516206297310122008-12-08T12:57:00.000-08:002008-12-08T13:05:34.205-08:00De Re Militari<a href="http://www.deremilitari.org/">deremilitary.org</a> is an outstanding website. It's great because it is maintained by academics and holds to scholarly principles. It's also reasonably well organized.<br /><br />The site, as the name says, is about military history. What the name says only by inference is that it is only about pre-modern military history, so it's not burdened down with endless WWII files. For those of us in ancient or medieval history, that's a real boon.<br /><br />The site has numerous scholarly articles, and even a few books, online. All open to the general public, as *all* scholarship should be. In addition, it has links to radio broadcasts, primary sources, and course syllabi, among other resources. There are special sections for the Crusades, the Byzantines, the Anglo-Normans, and the Vikings. It holds the Journal of Medieval Military History since 2003. The bibliography at the site is extensive, current, and informative. Finally, there's both a blog and a forum. In short, this should be a stop on any researcher's first, second or even third journey into the topic of medieval military history.<br /><br />The site is also available in English, Spanish, French, and Italian, though the articles are in whatever language in which they were written.Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-86426723346092489152008-10-08T15:26:00.000-07:002008-10-08T15:40:52.869-07:00On Active LearningI'm really tired of hearing about active learning as if the phrase had meaning.<br /><br />One way to deconstruct a statement is to consider its obverse. If there's such a thing as active learning, then there surely must be something called inactive learning. Let us try to construct what that might be.<br /><br />The literature around active learning rarely addresses this matter directly (there's a huge literature--just Google it). Instead, advocates of so-called active learning set up dichotomies in which the "inactive" learning is cast as lecturing, usually associated with "old" or "traditional" and, very often, with "not using technology." Let us set aside for the moment the obvious fact that the dichotomy is asserted but not proved, and look at the bogeyman of "modern" teaching: the lecture.<br /><br />Inactive learning entails (we must assume here, since the picture is rarely painted in detail) students sitting passively, just listening. They cannot be taking notes, for that would be an activity. They cannot be thinking or reflecting, as that is also an activity. Still less can they be raising a hand and asking a question. All those are activities. Active learning.<br /><br />I will grant to the advocates: if the student is sitting like a lump on a log, devoid of thought, then that would be unfortunate. I will assert, however, that this is not inactive learning but is not learning at all.<br /><br />If learning occurs, it's the result of an activity--no action on the part of the student, no learning. Period.<br /><br />"Active learning" is therefore a phrase with a useless adjective. There is no distinction between active learning and inactive learning, for the latter doesn't exist. Adding "active" adds no meaning.<br /><br />Stripped of the rhetorical device, what then do the advocates of "active learning" actually advocate? Two things, above all. First, collaboration (=group work). Second, use of technology and especially whatever is hot in the computer world this year.<br /><br />Those who know me will know that I'm indifferent to the former and that I'm keenly interested in the latter. I love to explore the interstices between technology and pedagogy. But I do try not to confuse the two.<br /><br />I'll take up collaboration in another post. For this one, I only want to urge clarity on this business of active learning. Remove the adjective and go from there. Seriously. Having students click through a Flash tutorial is no more active than is reading a book. I could make the argument that the latter actually requires a deeper and more sustained level of engagement.<br /><br />There's a topic related to "active learning" that talks about "student-centered" learning. This language also prefers the word "learning" to the word "teaching" -- indeed, that literature tends to disparage teaching. I'll get to that one too.<br /><br />Later, later....Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-69891519917585470092008-08-07T13:12:00.000-07:002008-08-07T13:23:00.644-07:00Uses for Google EarthOne day last year I was tootling around in Google Earth, which is a fun place in which to tootle, and happened to be tootling through the Alps. The Simplon Pass, to be precise.<br /><br />The view was incredibly dramatic, and I suddenly realized that this would be a great vehicle for any sort of narrative that involved travel. I thought first of my <a href="http://crusades.boisestate.edu/vpilgrim/">Virtual Pilgrimage</a>, but I reconsidered and chose instead a merchant route over the Alps (because I wanted that Simplon Pass view). It so happened that I had a route with at least some good specifics from Peter Spufford's book, <span style="font-style: italic;">Power and Profit</span>, a really excellent work on late medieval economics.<br /><br />My idea was to create a route in Google Earth that students could follow, reading text and viewing pictures along the way. This involved writing KML, which was no small undertaking. I retained the help of a student in our Academic Technologies unit, who built the skeleton and gave me enough to work with. From there, I tweaked heavily.<br /><br />The result is satisfactory, though not brilliant. There's not a good way to incorporate multiple pages or images at a single stop. There's not a good way to include large sections of text.<br /><br />But overall, the result is quite good. Students start in Paris and follow a series of obvious next clicks, moving south through France, Burgundy and Savoy, over the Alps at Lake Lucerne, then down along Lake Maggiore to Milan. I definitely can envision other such journeys, including ones by sea, around the Mediterranean or into the Baltic.<br /><br />If you have Google Earth, you may wish to talk a walkabout yourself. You can begin here:<br /><a href="http://boisestate.edu/courses/latemiddleages/merchant/">http://boisestate.edu/courses/latemiddleages/merchant/</a>Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-14900860099032311782008-07-01T14:41:00.000-07:002008-07-01T14:44:11.131-07:00Digital versus PrintDaniel Paul O'Donnell has written a thoughtful piece on digital scholarly works and printed scholarly works. He criticizes the usual practice of presenting these as opposites. Even though it's written by a medieval historian, I think you may find his argument relevant regardless of your discipline.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.heroicage.org/issues/11/em.php">http://www.heroicage.org/issues/11/em.php</a><br /><br /><br />Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-70074783957539355142008-05-23T13:55:00.000-07:002008-05-23T14:51:59.109-07:00EduBabbleQuarterly I receive a very nice (print) publication from Educause, rather unimaginatively entitled "Educause Quarterly". Quarterly I read this very nice (print) publication, and every quarter it gives me heartburn and makes my teeth itch. More or less at random, I'm choosing exerpts from an article from the latest, which like countless others before it speaks to the importance of new technology in education.<br /><br />The article is about a "seismic shift", which brings me to my first complaint: these people are interested in change only when it is seismic. By which you, gentle reader, should understand means "changes upon which the author, who positively must get published this semester, has chosen to fasten." Incremental change interests them not at all because, well, one doesn't get published when one writes about small change.<br /><br />The article skates on the thin ice of "Web 2.0", which the author uses to set up a standard School of Education dialectic between the old and the new. In this case the author chose the phrases "Classical knowledge" and "Web 2.0 knowledge" and this leads me to my second complaint: the inability to find much of anything good in the education system as it existed prior to, oh say, last week. This same education system that gave us [insert endless list of intellectual titans here] is presented as a penniless waif so bereft of merit that it resembles a cartoon character. Let me inflict upon you some example statements.<br /><br />"In the Classical perspective, 'knowledge' consists of accurate interrelationships among facts, based on unbiased research that produces compelling evidence about systemic causes.... In the Classical view of knowledge, there is only one correct, unambiguous interpretation of factual interrelationships."<br /><br />This is nonsense so nonsensical as to cause this reader to stop dead in his tracks. No scientist would ever say such a foolish thing. No social scientist would even begin to form the thought. Facts? I don't know about you, dear reader, but my experience of higher education was focused on the challenging of facts and on holding that every interpretation has ambiguity within it. This fellow has created a cartoon character so that he can go on to accuse it of being two-dimensional. (I pass in silence over the redundancy of "interrelationships" ... oh, all right, not entirely in silence, but at least in parentheses)<br /><br />But wait, as the voice on TV says, there's more. For, the silly statement is merely predicate to the silly conclusion. To wit: "In Classical education, the content and skills that experts feel every person should know are presented as factual 'truth' compiled in curriculum standards and assessed with high-stakes tests."<br /><br />Yes, by all means, let us have only tests where little is at stake. That aside, I'm hard-pressed to figure out how a skill is presented as factual truth. Content, yes; but a skill? Never mind. The author is by now hounding after its true prey and mere comprehensibility is about to become the victim of friendly fire. Here come the indictments of the "... Classical view of knowledge, expertise, and learning." (which, being uttered in the same breath, are the same? are different?)<br /><br />"Curriculum standards ... stem from disciplinary experts' determination of what students should learn." (I remind the reader that this is said as a Bad Thing)<br />"Presentational/assimilative pedagogies [I believe he means lectures] convey 'truth' from content experts to students, who learn by listening."<br />"Students who have mastered large amounts of factual material and are fluent in academic skills are believed to be well prepared for a successful, prosperous, fulfilling life."<br /><br />Good heavens. If the above were true, we should be in bad shape indeed. Happily, the above is pure silliness. I have never told my students that learning history would make them successful, prosperous or fulfilled. I do expect them to listen when I talk, I confess it. I even expect them to learn from what they hear. I never for an instant expect that this is the *only* place they will learn, though, and I rather resent being portrayed in this way. Any history teacher knows (to speak only for my own discipline) that the place where students learn history is in the term paper; that is, they learn history by *writing* history. The rest is merely supplemental.<br /><br />Inevitably, these authors must then trot out the virtuous alternatives of "Web 2.0 knowledge" -- the Three Gracies to settle the Three Furies. Herewith:<br /><br />"Curriculum includes considerable variation from one community to another ... based on the types of content and skills valued within a particular geographic or online subculture."<br />"Active learning pedagogies emphasize constructivist and situated teaching approaches that scaffold students' co-creation of knowledge."<br />"Assessment is based on sophisticated performances showing students' participation in peer review."<br /><br />It's a hard choice, but I think #2 is my favorite. I have to confess that at this point, YrsTruly is at a loss for words. If the above are virtues, I'm unable to grasp them; they swirl away from my reach like smoke. I certainly cannot come up with anything that would help a student understand the Reformation.<br /><br />And so to a final complaint: the heedless insult. Not content with dissing the system that produced him, the Seer must also bash his peers.<br /><br />"...the response of most educators is to ignore or dismiss this epistemological clash." (wake me up when you hear the sound of clashing) "Many faculty force students to turn off electronic devices in the classroom; instead, students could be using search tools to bring in current information and events related to the class discussion." True, they <span style="font-style: italic;">could</span>. Most will simply IM their friends or work on another class' homework. Even if they did "bring in" information, what the devil does that mean? Will they raise their hand every time their RSS feed updates? or twitter everyone else in the room? Moreover, not everything is relevant. There's not a lot of late-breaking news on the Reformation. Does the author really think an 80-person chat room is an ideal learning environment?<br /><br />"Some faculty ban the use of online sources and deride the validity of any perspective that does not come from a disciplinary scholar." I'll do my own deriding, thank you. I agree: any teacher who derides sources before the students ought to have his hand slapped. Our job is to get students to question, to come to their own conclusions; deriding a source removes that burden. That there are bad teachers is an eternal truth (note the lack of quotes); one cannot derive from this the conclusion that most teachers are bad nor that the educational premises of academia are faulty.<br /><br />And then the <span style="font-style: italic;">coup de grace</span>: "This refusal to acknowledge the weaknesses of the Classical perspective and the strengths of Web 2.0 epistemologies is as ill-advised as completely abandoning Classical epistemology for Web 2.0 meaning-making."<br /><br />I'll give you a moment to recover.<br /><br />First, I protest: Web 2.0 gets multiple epistemologies whereas Classical gets only one. Unfair! We (I presume I'm lumped in with the Classicists) take a back seat to no one in epistemology-making (not to be confused with meaning-making, though the reader may be pardoned for confusion on the point). Second, I protest again: the punch line is punchless. Going to one extreme is as bad as going to the other extreme. Is this the best he can manage? After all the name-calling, I was really hoping for something epochal -- a jeremiad, at the least.<br /><br />Frankly, dear reader, after all of this, YrsTruly is fair worn out. It's exhausting, wading through nonsense. I do not single out this one article. "Educause Quarterly" comes out with multiple articles every issue and has for years. They all trumpet the latest development as being Clearly The Future, and they all wish to blast everything prior into the past. It's rather a surprise to find there is an entire publication in which it is possible repeatedly to cry wolf.<br /><br />I feel better, though. I've used Web 2.0 technology to vent, and isn't that one of its greatest virtues? Or at least most frequent uses? I'll toddle off now. And please, most sincerely, dear reader, if you should happen to see me attempting to scaffold students' co-creation of knowledge ... please, just shoot me.Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-86097089809239229522008-04-25T15:25:00.000-07:002008-04-25T15:44:21.137-07:00Why a blog is not a planning toolI thought I should use the blog to think about blogs, so I started this blog. So I could blog, you see.<br /><br />Since planning how to use a blog in my Reformation course next spring is currently on my mind, I naturally began writing those thoughts out here. For a while (see earlier posts), I thought this would work out well.<br /><br />Now, I'm not so sure.<br /><br />Because I'm using other tools as well; specifically, wikis; and most specifically, Google Sites <span style="font-size:85%;">(an unfortuate name: GoogleWiki is both more precise and sounds better</span>). So I set up a wiki for the course and started typing stuff in there as well. I'm already starting to realize that this plethora (<span style="font-size:85%;">yes, I said plethora</span>) of tools is the electronic equivalent of having Post-It® notes everywhere—convenient for making any individual note, but a nightmare to organize.<br /><br />What goes in the blog?<br /><br />What goes in the wiki?<br /><br />Damnedifiknow. But I noticed something right off. I'm trying (see older posts) to puzzle out how to construct actual assignments for my students relating to this Blog Thing. I started sketching my latest ideas in the wiki, then wondered if it should go in the blog instead, and realized it should not.<br /><br />Why not plan in the blog?<br /><br />Because a blog is sequential. Yes, I can go back and edit an existing post, but its fundamental nature is to be a sequence of statements. A wiki, otoh, is intended to be edited, revised. If you need or want to look at the revision history, you can, but what's front and center is always the latest version: your polished gem, your best take.<br /><br />A blog is a river that flows. A wiki is a painting. Or perhaps a communal voice.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 0);font-size:130%;" >Big Conclusion</span><br />All of which led me to the Big Conclusion: use the wiki for documents; use the blog for commentary.<br /><br />"Ooh boy, Skip, what profound insight," the audience sighed sarcastically.<br /><br />Well, it was news to me. And it trouble the waters of the Blogosphere with this profound insight because I think it may have implications for how I use the two in class. One for the article on the Eucharist (for example), and the other for commentary about the article. The one, to put it another way, for the conclusions of the group, stated as a single voice; and the other to let each student comment along the way to that conclusion, to have a social presence (as I think Roger said), and even to allow room for minority reports.<br /><br />So, until I arrive at a contrary conclusion, I intend to use these two Google tools in the same way. The wiki for my formal documents (a syllabus, a rubric, etc.) and the blog to chronicle the struggle to produce them.Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7023089772670354492.post-23763854709892785062008-03-31T21:21:00.000-07:002008-04-04T19:58:21.009-07:00First Entry: what this blog isn'tIt's not just about medieval history. My area of interest is around 1100 to 1700, which doesn't fit neatly into a single name. Plus, because I teach Western Civ, there are going to be some other topics here as well.<br /><br />It's not just about history, either. It's also about pedagogy, about the discipline of history generally, about the use of the Web in teaching history <span style="color: rgb(102, 51, 102);">{whether or not you're a general}</span>, and about using blogs in particular. There will be no particular order to all this. The blog is best suited to digitizing consciousness <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">{I have ten digits}</span>; a website is for bringing pattern and order from the stream. I have only just now decided this.<br /><br />I have only just today signed, and had counter-signed, a document, which must be further counter-countersigned and yet counter-counter-countersigned, that states that I am officially in some sort of Blog Project. This news would be more exciting if I knew what the devil that meant. Alas, I do believe I'm supposed to Figure It Out.<br /><br />In the name of Figgerin' therefore I offer up this:<br /><br />Fall 2008 I'm going to keep doing this. One may pass it off as research, if one is so inclined. But it's really more the case that I can't figure a way to inflict blogs on my poor freshmen in Hist101, so I've decided to spare them. May they lead long and happy lives.<br /><br />Spring 2008, though, the sword falls. I teach the Reformation. And, hey, wouldn't it be just ever so nifty if the students blogged from the point of view of the various churches? Here a Mennonite blog, there a Lutheran, a Calvinist, a Socinian, maybe an Antitrinitarian, certainly a Catholic. Room for all, I should think. Playing with dynamite, sez you? All o' that, sez I, and more. It wouldn't be as much fun if it weren't dangerous.<br /><br />I may go further. Why inflict doctrine and dogma upon them? Remove the essays from the site (hope they don't know about the Wayback Machine) and let each group construct its ideology from research. Maybe make 'em use a wiki. That'd be wikid.<br /><br />At least that's the working theory until a new brainstorm comes along and washes away the tender sprouts.Dr. Ellis L. (Skip) Knoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09665527380333411119noreply@blogger.com0