Week 10: Timelines + maps

This week we’re thinking about time and space. You’ve probably thought more about both time and space over the past few months than you had ever thought about them before, but understanding these two concepts is critical for doing history no matter what your topic or area of interest.

Monday

Today we’re focusing on time.

Thought Provoker

Look around you. How many things can you see that might help you tell what time it is? (Make sure you think beyond the clock!)

Activities

Listen to this podcast episode about time, or read the transcript. In this one, I’m going to ask you to pause your recording where I say to in the podcast so that you can answer a few questions while you’re listening—so pay attention for those moments. You’ll also need a pencil and paper handy.

Small Project 4

This is the first of your projects that you can select whether to do it or not, depending on the grade you contracted for.

You’ll be thinking about time in connection with your war.

So here’s what you need to do:

  • Select some important events about your war that you think could go into a timeline of the war, and write them down. You can focus on any part of the war; you just need to be able to justify your choices–and I do NOT want a timeline of the entire war. Pick a specific section of the war or a particular way of viewing it (e.g., events that are important for women in the story; events about the navy, just for a few ideas).
    • Use the sources you’ve found and put into Zotero and Tropy to help you figure what’s important, or do some more research–if you do more research, it is a good idea to put that research into Zotero as well!
    • Make sure you write down lots of details about your events, including who’s involved, when it was, why it’s important (and make sure you’re keeping track of how you know these things; citing your sources is important!).
    • You need no fewer than 5 and no more than 15 events.
  • Using TimelineJS, build a timeline of some portion of your war.
  • Publish your timeline to your blog along with a paragraph explaining why you made the choices you did.
  • Watch this screencast to find out how I want you to build your timeline. (Yes, I know this is Small Project #4, not #5; in previous semesters I made you do a whole extra project before this, so you should be grateful. 🙂 )
    • Remember that you can pause this recording in order to do the things it says, and then resume!

Thursday: Visualizations

  • Listen to our podcast about visualization and answer the questions in your Slack group (transcript here—you’ll likely want to consult this even if you listen, so you can see the visuals).
  • Count the number of visualizations you can find in 3 minutes on your preferred news site. Report your results in the emoji poll in the #general channel.
  • Be sure to discuss the visualization I’ve posted in your Slack group–I’ll post these on Thursday evening or Friday morning.

Additional resources

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