I have the good fortune to be teaching a graduate class this semester, to a cohort of Worcester Public Schools high school teachers. It’s a course in Constitutional History since 1877 for a local TAH grant called “Securing the Blessings…
Taking it to the Stacks
Last semester I blogged about a couple of experiments with incorporating library searches and materials into my US History II survey class. I teach it every semester so I’m always tweaking. This term I started off in an overcrowded, overheated…
Oz Behind the Curtain, Part 4: The Syllabus
Here’s the premise of this post: a syllabus should be more than a boring, text-laden legal contract. If you let it, it can also be 1) a thing of beauty, and 2) a tool to think with about your teaching…
Oz Behind the Curtain, Part 3a: Governance and Alignment
I’ve been blogging about stages in my course & syllabus design process, sparked mainly by the syllabus workshop in last week’s faculty development institute (part 1, part 2 and part 3 cross-posted to the Juvenile Instructor). I went back to…
Oz Behind the Curtain, Part 2
This is Part 2 in a series on course & syllabus design; Part 1 is here. I last taught “Religions in America” in the fall of 2009 as a special topics course in history, which meant I didn’t have to…
Oz Behind the Curtain, Part 1
This will be a series of posts about the process of course creation, using my “Religions in America” course as a case study. I’m thinking about it this week because this is my university’s faculty “Winter Institute” and as part…
Fireside Reading
This winter break I’ve enjoyed two luxuries that worked well in tandem: our woodstove, and a stack of books I’m reading for the sheer enjoyment of them. Yes, okay, some of them relate to upcoming courses I’ll be teaching, but…
For the Love of the Burrito
Today was the last methods course class session, and the topic was History on the Internet. Williams’s The Historian’s Toolbox, which was published in 2007, was our reading for today. Williams tacks on a chapter at the tail end about…
Coming Home to THATCamp New England
So I’ve been looking forward to going to a THATCamp since I narrowly missed the first one, by being lame enough to go home after the 2009 Omeka playdate (which was great, by the way, and completely worth the trip).…
Drop & Give Me Twenty Eight: in which I Instruct a THATCampNE Bootcamp
Tonight (Friday, Oct 21, 2011) I’m one of the three “Bootcamp” instructors for #THATCampNE, The Humanities And Technology Camp New England, at the Mandel Center at Brandeis University, my graduate alma mater. It isn’t really a formal presentation, because those…