Quiz 4

World History Summer 2020

Quiz 4

Each of the following current events articles can be understood on multiple levels. The majority of people who read them will take them at face value. Whatever the author says will be taken as fact, and the reader will have little to no background / historical knowledge of the issues that may be involved. How has taking this journey through World History this summer grown your ability to understand or appreciate articles such as these? Perhaps you are in a better position to be a critical consumer of media. Maybe you have a deeper, longer-term understanding of the issues presented. Maybe you recognize more nuance and the intersection of issues. Maybe you just get more enjoyment out of reading them because you know what the authors are talking about. Or it could be something else entirely. 

How has learning World History grown your ability to understand or appreciate articles such as these? Another way to think about it is, think about how you would have read the article 3 months ago. Do you think you read it differently now? In what way?

Please choose 3 of the following 4 articles. Each is very current. Summarize the key points of the article and answer the question: How has learning World History this summer grown your ability to understand or appreciate the article? Be sure that your answers demonstrate historical knowledge… this is best done by citing examples and details from the historical record as it was presented to you during the course of our class. You may use our textbook, your blogs, other students’ blogs and any other resource used during the course of the class.

I suspect some of you will have very interesting answers, and you might want to read each other’s thoughts. Please post your responses on your blog by the due date, Sunday, July 19, 11pm.

Remember, respond to 3 of the articles. Plan to spend about 30 minutes on each response.

1) Umut Uras. “Turkey turning Hagia Sophia back into mosque divides social media.” Al Jazeera. July 11, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/turkey-turning-hagia-sophia-mosque-divides-social-media-200711104417533.html

2) Anne Mawathe. “Coronavirus: Why Africans should take part in vaccine trials.” BBC. May 18, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52678741

3) Ganesh Chakravarthi. “Is it Time to Embrace the Anthropocene? The Anthropocene requires that humanity take responsibility for preserving the earth and its species.” The Diplomat. February 11, 2020. https://thediplomat.com/2020/02/is-it-time-to-embrace-the-anthropocene/

4) Justin Dallaire. “Why Pride sponsors shouldn’t hit pause during Black Lives Matter protests.” strategy. June 9, 2020. https://strategyonline.ca/2020/06/09/why-pride-sponsors-shouldnt-hit-pause-during-black-lives-matter-protests/

Module 10

Week 10          21^stCentury conflicts & issues. Quiz 4on WW Ch’s 19-23. Project presentations.

(July 13-17)    Due:    Module 10, Ch 22 (End of Empire), Ch 23 (Capitalism & Culture) 

                        & formal online presentation of research results

Last week! You’re just about there. And if you aren’t just about there, please communicate with me with a timeline for completing the remaining assignments. If this will take more than an additional week or two, we will need to consider filing an Incomplete grade for you for the class. Please do not accept a failing grade for the class, as the special circumstances in which we find ourselves preclude any opportunity to take the class again. If you are in danger of failing and are unable to complete the remaining work in a timely manner, we will need to file for an Incomplete and you will need to complete the requirements independently by May 2021.

1) Please follow the instructions for your Final Research Presentation, which were provided by email and also posted to the class website. Post your link to your blog by Wednesday, July 15, and read/comment on the blogs of others by 11pm Sunday, July 19.

2) Read chapters 22 and 23. Answer the same question for each chapter: In what way(s) do you see the historical developments described in this chapter continuing to evolve in our world today? Make a separate blog post for each chapter. 

3) Quiz 4 will be provided on Wednesday, July 15 and will be due by 11pm Sunday, July 19.

4) Breathe a collective sigh of relief at one more milestone toward graduation completed. 

Final Research Presentation

FINAL RESEARCH PRESENTATION

1) Please prepare a brief presentation in which you:

a)   Introduce the topic of your research.

b)   Describe at least one “best practice” (i.e. something you found most useful) from your Annotated Bibliography.

c)   Explain who your letter / communication is written for and why you chose this reader.

d)   Read your letter.

e)   Provide any concluding thoughts you may have about the research project &/or the class as a whole.

2) Post your presentation online in a location from which other students will be able to view it. Then post the link to your presentation on your blog. Some of you had trouble providing your Gilgamesh recording to me… it was on an invitation-only Google drive, for example, or you just emailed a large file to me instead of sharing it via link. Please keep those difficulties in mind when completing your research presentation assignment. You MUST share your recording in a way that enables your fellow students to view it, either via link or in some other manner you prefer, without running into similar difficulties. Your fellow students, for example, may not want to download an enormous file just to look at your recording, or they may not persist through multiple attempts to gain password-protected access to your file. If these barriers are in place, most will simply skip your recording and look at someone else’s.

3) Watch and comment on at least 3 other students’ presentations.

Module 9

Module 9:  20^thCentury challenges.

(July 6-12)

Due:    Module 9, RP & WW Ch 20 (Collapse at Center), Ch 21 (World Communism)

You’re almost done, everyone. Keep up that great energy and know that we will be winding down these last two weeks. 

1) Your Research Project– a combination of the Annotated Bibliography and the Letter, plus a small amount for your Presentation – will be tentatively graded as soon as I have the final draft of your letter. That’s due July 12, but you can send it to me earlier if you are ready. If you haven’t yet sent me a draft of your letter, or are stuck farther back in the project and still haven’t sent me your Annotated Bibliography, please prioritize that as your first work toward this class this week.

2) Presentation of your Research Project will be online. We can do this via a live Zoom meeting if there are enough of you who would like to do that, but again, we have students currently on at least two continents and spread out over 2-3 time zones, so I know not everyone would be able to do that. If we do a Zoom session for this, I would propose Wednesday evening the final week of class (next week) at about 7pm Pacific time. Please let me know if you are interested and available. Otherwise, you will record yourself making your final presentation, post your recording online in a way that makes it available to your fellow students and me, and post the link to your blog. An assignment sheet outlining the requirements for the final presentation will be provided later this week.

3) In addition to finishing your project, you also have two chaptersto read this week. Please post one blog entry per chapter, choosing one of the side bar questions, or one of the end-of-chapter big picture questions, to focus your post.

I will also post Module 10 later this week, so those of you who are eager to complete all the requirements of the class and want to get ahead can do that.

I hope you all had a nice but safe 4^thof July celebration.