Final Exam Study Guide

As a class, you will divide and conquer the study guide for your final exam. Click on this link to get to your collaborative study guide (Google Doc). Edit the cells in the second column to identify or answer the content in the first column.

Use your previous tests/quizzes for most of the information and use your textbooks for what's left. I will use your work to produce online flashcards that you can study for the exam. So, your flashcards will only be as good as the work you do on the Google Doc. Try to get it all done by Wednesday afternoon, at which time I will make the flashcard set.


p.s. Pressing control+enter is the same as pressing enter within a cell.

p.p.s. The truly OCD students can "clean up" the accuracy, grammar, and spelling in other students' work.

Professional-Quality Fonts (Free!)

Want to make your presentation look sharp but tired of the same old Microsoft font collection? Want to stand out from the crowd? Here's a couple articles that link to deliciously free designer fonts:

• 40+ Excellent Freefonts For Professional Design
• 75+ Excellent Free Fonts For Professional Design

Project: Civil War - Schedule

Monday, 25 March: Ramona, Kevin, Mike, Kwesi, Mirembe

Historical Figure Rubric

Content - 40%

• Biographical Sketch - 10%
• time and place of birth
• major movements in location
• educational and professional milestones
• marriage
• Historical Impact - 30%
• What did they do?
• What was their motivation?
• How did they make a difference?
• When did they make most of their contributions?
• Where did they operate?
• How would that time and place be different without them?
• What adversity did they face? 
• Who were their enemies?
• Who were their allies/supporters?
• How did they respond?

The other 60% will be graded according to the Presentation Rubric (Presentation - 40%, Sources - 10%, and Effort - 10%).

Presentation Rubric

• Content - 40%
• Accurate - 15%
• factual
• no personal opinions
• debated points presented in a balanced way
• Informative - 10%
• connects to class discussions
• adds to class discussions
• Thorough - 15%
• detailed information
• no trivial information
• Presentation - 40%
• Organization - 10%
• Structure
• chronological
• modular
• physical
• spatial
• problem/solution
• issues/action
• case study
• compare/contrast
• matrix
• Transitions
• Voice - 5%
• loud enough for everyone to hear
• moderate rate of speech (not too fast)
• Slides - 5%
• few ideas (ideally one) per slide
• minimal text
• at least 20 slides (not including title slide and works cited)
• Images - 5%
• quantity
• quality (appealing; high resolution)
• appropriateness
• citation as footnote on individual slide or all image citations on one slide at the end
• Color Scheme, Text Animations, Slide Transitions, and Fonts - 5%
• appealing
• "less is more" when it comes to animations and slide transitions
• appropriate to content/structure
• Audience Interaction - 5%
• asking questions
• fielding questions
• handouts
• participation
• Time - 5%
• between 7-10 minutes
• Sources - 10%
• Credibility - 4%
• Quantity (at least three in addition to your textbook) - 4%
• MLA Formatting - 2%
• Effort - 10%
• Creativity - 5%
• Planning - 5%

Project: Civil War - Topics

Mirembe: New Orleans & Robert E. Lee
Mike: Gettysburg & Harriet Tubman
Kwesi: Antietam & Ulysses S. Grant
Ramona: Chancellorsville & Jefferson Davis
Kevin: Shiloh & "Stonewall" Jackson

Project: Civil War

Topics

• Battles
• Antietam, Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, The Wilderness, Richmond, Mechanicsburg, Murfreesboro, New Orleans, Vicksburg, Shiloh and Morgan's Raid
• People
• Grant, Lee, McClellan, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Sheridan, Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, Clara Barton, Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, John Brown

Pick one battle and one person. You will make two presentations, one on each of your choices. Your presentation on a person is due next Friday, 22 March, and your presentation on a battle is due on Wednesday, 27 March.

I will post a rubric on how you will be assessed. For now, please find three credible sources in addition to your textbook, due on Monday, 18 March.

Possible Sources

• PBS: List of Online Resources

11-2 Essay Questions

• Describe the progress of war in the West.
• Compare the eastern campaigns to those in the West.

PowerPoint Tips

Here's the presentation that I shared with you in class. Credited and linked, as promised.

Don't Be A PowerPoint Felon from Nick Smith

This one has more tips on slide design. A bit more artsy and certainly more humorous in its sarcasm/meanness. Let's just not be mean about each other's (or our own) presentations. :)

You Suck At PowerPoint! from Jesse Desjardins - @jessedee

11-1 Essay Questions

• What are the strengths and weaknesses of each region's economy?
• Contrast the political situations of the Union and the Confederacy.

Credible Online Sources

How do you know if your source is credible or not? Here's a few guiding questions that I found at a university library's website*:

• Does the site have a scholarly apparatus: a bibliography and endnotes?
• Is there a clear author?  What are the author's credentials, biases, and perspectives? 
• Who is the publisher?  A university or historical society?  A company? 
• Is the thesis built on a foundation of primary source material?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the site?
• How does the site help me understand my topic?
• What questions are left unanswered by the author?

Tips on finding credible sources:

• One clue that can help you decide if a site is credible is the domain name.  In general, sites that end with "edu" (educational sites), "gov" (government sites), or "org" (nonprofit organizations) offer more credible information than sites that end with "com" (commerical sites trying to sell something).
• Google your topic along with the keyword "library guide" or "libguide".  This will lead you to library web sites about your topic, and librarians generally list only high-quality sites on their pages.
• Specialty Search Engines
• IPL2: works like Yahoo, but finds mostly quality sites discovered by librarians
• InfoMine: scholarly internet collections

*http://guides.lib.ua.edu/content.php?pid=126639&sid=1087764

Frederick Douglass: Independence Day Speech

Source PDF: Independence Day Speech by Frederick Douglass

1. Write down two quotes from the speech that impressed you.
2. What are the two perspectives on the Fourth of July?
3. To what group of people in what place does Douglass compare slaves in America?
4. Are the two perspectives compatible with each other? Explain.
5. How does Douglass argue for the "equal manhood" of African Americans?
6. What is the slave's view of Americans celebrating their independence?

Chapter 9 Study Guides

• Chapter 9
• Section 1
• Section 2
• Section 3

Fractional Reserve Banking, Executive Orders, and Nullification

1. Andrew Jackson ended the Second National Bank in 1836 because he deemed it a monopoly that benefited the wealthy. 
1. According to the video, has the Federal Reserve Bank, a central bank that was instituted in 1913, done any better to create wealth for those besides the wealthy?
2. What problem does the creation of money cause?
2. Read this article about executive orders and answer the following questions:
1. What are executive orders?
2. When are they necessary?
3. When should they be challenged?
3. Read this article about nullification and answer the following questions:
1. What is nullification?
2. Why do its opponents reject its legality?
3. Why do its proponents affirm its validity?

N.B. Feel free to click on the links within the articles to get more background on the what is being discussed.

Chapter 7 Study Guides

• Chapter 7
• Section 1
• Section 2
• Section 3
• Section 4 

Electoral College

Watch the following videos (yes, watch both) and write a summary for each so that we can discuss the electoral college in class tomorrow.

New Year, New Blog

Hello, students of KICS. I'll be experimenting with posting relevant class activities to this blog for your good. Enjoy.