February 1

IB 20

I did a homework check on your letter of introduction at the beginning of class. I also collected your academic integrity policy and statement from you as well. We continued our look at history and historiography today by having some discussions centered around definitions of history. We also briefly looked at historical thinking skills that we'll be developing during the course. Tomorrow we will re-visit the worksheets on evaluating sources of information, distinguishing between fact and opinion, and the 8C's of historical analysis.

You do have a homework assignment tonight, please read the article "Why Study or Write History?" and answer the following questions:


1. What is history? Summarize and explain three definitions of this concept. Do these different meanings of history contradict or compliment one another?

2. Why study history? How and why do historians seek to make sense of the human experience? List and summarize at least five reasons for studying history, rank them in order of importance and justify your ranking.

3. Identify and discuss the kinds of questions historians ask that guide their investigation into the past.

4. What are primary sources? What are secondary sources? Discuss at least three problems historians must overcome when they use different types of sources.

IB 30

We covered a lot of ground today by looking at the Great Depression in Canada. You should be comfortable with any Paper 3 questions that require you to compare and contrast the Great Depression in the United States to another country in your region of study. Hopefully, you would pick Canada if you were to answer that question. I will post the PowerPoint presentation that I went through today on the wiki this afternoon. We also did a little bit of current events at the end of class. Tomorrow, the goal is to cover the Great Depression in Latin America and get into looking at the road to WWII.