text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520023912

Testing first level
NavHead This revision=20070520024329
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:43, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

The fifth level is shown, correctly, as a link, but
NavHead This revision=20070520025044 And it is shown on, for example, Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520024442 But now we cannot use "edit" to go to a subthread. Try to fix it.
 * Comment: The fifth level is shown as Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520024442.

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:50, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

Try again
NavHead This revision = 20070520033410
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:34, 20 May 2007 (UTC) previous replies to this comment
 * reply[]

feature request- Can we navigate towards the root?
NavHead This revision = 20070520033648 --Hillgentleman|Talk 03:36, 20 May 2007 (UTC) previous replies to this comment
 * Comment: Must we always go through the BASEPAGE?
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520024329

testing second level
NavHead This revision=20070520024409
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520024409

testing third level
NavHead This revision=20070520024421
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520024421

testing fourth level
NavHead This revision=20070520024442
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520024442

testing fifth level
NavHead This revision=20070520024455
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520025044

A link is now provided to a subthread
NavHead This revision = 20070520025956
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:59, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520025956

Testing One
NavHead This revision = 20070520030056
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:00, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

the link was wrong. now we use the relative FULLPAGENAME instead of substituting it.
NavHead This revision = 20070520031006 --Hillgentleman|Talk 03:10, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: Namespaces added back
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520030056

testing two
NavHead This revision = 20070520030114
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520030114

testing three
NavHead This revision = 20070520030135
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520030135

testing four
NavHead This revision = 20070520030147
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]


text:
User:Skyangelko~enwikiversity/Amatsu Kuntou

The name means Heavenly Education. This is the teaching of Mizu Shura. Mizu Shura is several teachings between the reality and dreams. That is why it is called Amatsu Kuntou. Though the teachings aren't traditional Japanese (not Japanese period) they use the japanese language. It is not religon or anything like that. It is educating people It was founded by a person with the codename Violet Ai. The first lesson is called Sono Faito. It means The Fight. This teaches life is hard and people never understand. People kill for their own gain. So defence is mandatory. People who study this take on learning several months of Tai Chi, Kung Fu, Southern Praying Mantis style Kung Fu, Northern Shaolin Kung Fu, Northern Seven Star Praying Mantis, and Ba Gua.


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520031006

testing 1
NavHead This revision = 20070520031029
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:10, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

FULLPAGENAME only works on the basepage. must use namespace:basepagename;
NavHead This revision = 20070520031509 Now we subst the pagename into the revision link. --Hillgentleman|Talk 03:15, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: SeeThreaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520031006
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520031509

testing A
NavHead This revision = 20070520031545
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:15, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

changed to "previous repliesto this comment"
NavHead This revision = 20070520032328 | previous replies to this comment

 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:23, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520031545

testing B
NavHead This revision = 20070520031604
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:16, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520031604

testing C
NavHead This revision = 20070520031617
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:16, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]


text: Category:Mechanical engineering

title: Category:Mechanical engineering


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520032328

testing alpha
NavHead This revision = 20070520032418 | previous replies to this comment --Hillgentleman|Talk 03:24, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment:
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520032418

testing beta
NavHead This revision = 20070520032512 | previous replies to this comment
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:25, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520032512

testing gamma
NavHead This revision = 20070520032533 | previous replies to this comment
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:25, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

testing gamma 2
NavHead This revision = 20070520033131 | previous replies to this comment
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:31, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520033410

testing one
NavHead This revision = 20070520033437
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:34, 20 May 2007 (UTC) previous replies to this comment
 * reply[]

test one 1
NavHead This revision = 20070520033533
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:35, 20 May 2007 (UTC) previous replies to this comment
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520033437

testing two
NavHead This revision = 20070520033501
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:35, 20 May 2007 (UTC) previous replies to this comment
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520033648

We may add a special:whatlinkshere/
NavHead This revision = 20070520034306 --Hillgentleman|Talk 03:43, 20 May 2007 (UTC) previous replies to this comment
 * Comment:
 * reply[]


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/archive

Archived at 20070520034949

[ Purge] Documentation and Demonstration This revision=20070520023912 [ Purge] {{subst:wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/preload}} {{subst:{{subst:NAMESPACE}}:{{subst:BASEPAGENAME}}|subst=subst:}} --Hillgentleman|Talk 02:39, 20 May 2007 (UTC) Questions? Comments?
 * Comment: This thread was started with
 * To archive a thread, go to the subpage /archive of the thread, and
 * To reply, press the external link "reply".
 * To edit an existing (sub)thread, press "Edit" next to the section header.
 * Compare: Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst (without depth)
 * The default depth is now set at 4, for convenience in testing.
 * reply[]

Testing first level
NavHead This revision=20070520024329
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:43, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

testing second level
NavHead This revision=20070520024409
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

testing third level
NavHead This revision=20070520024421
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

testing fourth level
NavHead This revision=20070520024442
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

testing fifth level
NavHead This revision=20070520024455
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:44, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

The fifth level is shown, correctly, as a link, but
NavHead This revision=20070520025044 And it is shown on, for example, Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520024442 But now we cannot use "edit" to go to a subthread. Try to fix it.
 * Comment: The fifth level is shown as Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520024442.

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:50, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

A link is now provided to a subthread
NavHead This revision = 20070520025956
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 02:59, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

Testing One
NavHead This revision = 20070520030056
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:00, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

testing two
NavHead This revision = 20070520030114
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

testing three
NavHead This revision = 20070520030135
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

testing four
NavHead This revision = 20070520030147
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:01, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

the link was wrong. now we use the relative FULLPAGENAME instead of substituting it.
NavHead This revision = 20070520031006 --Hillgentleman|Talk 03:10, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: Namespaces added back
 * reply[]

testing 1
NavHead This revision = 20070520031029
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:10, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

FULLPAGENAME only works on the basepage. must use namespace:basepagename;
NavHead This revision = 20070520031509 Now we subst the pagename into the revision link. --Hillgentleman|Talk 03:15, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: SeeThreaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth/20070520031006
 * reply[]

testing A
NavHead This revision = 20070520031545
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:15, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

testing B
NavHead This revision = 20070520031604
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:16, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

testing C
NavHead This revision = 20070520031617
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:16, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

changed to "previous repliesto this comment"
NavHead This revision = 20070520032328 | previous replies to this comment

 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:23, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

testing alpha
NavHead This revision = 20070520032418 | previous replies to this comment --Hillgentleman|Talk 03:24, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment:
 * reply[]

testing beta
NavHead This revision = 20070520032512 | previous replies to this comment
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:25, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

testing gamma
NavHead This revision = 20070520032533 | previous replies to this comment
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:25, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

testing gamma 2
NavHead This revision = 20070520033131 | previous replies to this comment
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:31, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * reply[]

Try again
NavHead This revision = 20070520033410
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:34, 20 May 2007 (UTC) previous replies to this comment
 * reply[]

testing one
NavHead This revision = 20070520033437
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:34, 20 May 2007 (UTC) previous replies to this comment
 * reply[]

testing two
NavHead This revision = 20070520033501
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:35, 20 May 2007 (UTC) previous replies to this comment
 * reply[]

test one 1
NavHead This revision = 20070520033533
 * Comment:

--Hillgentleman|Talk 03:35, 20 May 2007 (UTC) previous replies to this comment
 * reply[]

feature request- Can we navigate towards the root?
NavHead This revision = 20070520033648 --Hillgentleman|Talk 03:36, 20 May 2007 (UTC) previous replies to this comment
 * Comment: Must we always go through the BASEPAGE?
 * reply[]

We may add a special:whatlinkshere/
NavHead This revision = 20070520034306 --Hillgentleman|Talk 03:43, 20 May 2007 (UTC) previous replies to this comment
 * Comment:
 * reply[]


text: User talk:Pulakcat

title: User talk:Pulakcat


text:
Wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst

See also: the learning project Threaded discussions with NavFrames. [ To start a new thread] ([ easily]) [ To graft a thread] ([ easily]) [ Purge]
 * Past discussions: /20070519, /20070520

for programmer: /preload|/preloadeasy|/preloadeasy1| /graft | /grafteasy|/grafteasy1|/preloadwithtemplates Threads today

Threads yesterday

Demonstration and Documentation This revision=20070522105803

[ Purge] [ To start a new thread]
 * Comment: To reply or to comment, press the external link "reply".
 * To start a thread, go to a page in a namespace with subpage function, and enter

{{subst:wikiversity:Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst/preload}} Archived at {{subst:REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} {{subst:{{subst:NAMESPACE}}:{{subst:BASEPAGENAME}}|subst=subst:}} which is useful if we plan to export a discussion to another wiki. Compare: Threaded discussions with NavFrames with subst with depth --Hillgentleman|Talk 05:29, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * To archive a thread, either move the page to a subpage, e.g. /20070519; or go to the subpage /archive of the thread, and
 * To edit an existing (sub)thread, press "Edit" next to the section header.

 * Questions? Comments?

 * reply[]

at 20100221163806


text:
JavaScript/Debugging Challenges

These debugging challenges are written in JavaScript, and designed to complement the units: ICAB4225A Automate processes and ICAT4221A Locate equipment, system and software faults

Challenge Set 1 - Lexical Errors
Lexical errors are introduced when the programmer enters symbols that are not part of the programming language. Unlike when you misspell a word in English, this inevitably leads to a breakdown in programming communications. See if you can see (or find) the lexical errors in the following code snippets...

1 2 3 4 5

Challenge Set 2 - Syntactic Errors
A syntax error occurs when you use the right symbols, but in a way that doesn't make sense to the compiler or interpreter. Something like the English sentence: "You don't program good"

1 2 3 4 5 6

Challenge Set 3 - Execution Errors
Execution errors occur when the program has the correct syntax and lexicon, but you're making the wrong requests to get the results you desire.

1 2 3 4

Challenge Set 4 - Logic Errors
These are errors introduced Through faulty design. Once again, the syntax is correct, but the results are unexpected, usually because you haven't considered the data being processed. These are the hardest errors to spot, and often the most expensive to correct.

1 2 3

title: JavaScript/Debugging Challenges


text:
User:Mnuddin

Mnuddin 13:57, 20 May 2007 (UTC) Hello, every one. My name is Md Nasir Uddin.

title: User:Mnuddin


text:
User:S.spigler

From my website's About page:

I have so many (nick)names that it is very hard to remember all of them (maybe because I hate the majority of those..), btw my real name is Stefano Spigler, and I am a 17 years old boy from Italy, living in Rome (where I moved a few years ago). I have quite a lot of interests, mainly, but not only, in scientific matters; in fact, I love Physics and Mathematics, and I'm sure the first will be the object of my job, of my research (I love Particle Physics, HE Physics, Theoretical Physics, Astrophysics =] ). Because of these interests, I have already started studying on my own advanced (with respect to my classes) topics both in Physics and in Mathematics, buying several books both in US and in Italy. Apart these, I'm attracted by general science - ie other branches of Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Technology, Informatics. I dedicated much time to the last: since I had my first computer, when I was 8 years old, I have studied a few programming languages such as BASIC variants, various ASM flavors, C/C++, a bit of Fortran, (X)HTML+CSS, PHP, (My)SQL/SQLite, a bit of computer architecture, and I have met LINUX, the great god of OSs! However, I like Literature, too: I like reading both modern novels and biographies, and 'modern' Italian poetry (I mean, '800-'900, imho the best poetry ever! =D Anyhow, I don't know many poems in English or other languages.. =\ ); I like Latin, too; it's a fantastic language: in fact, even though nowadays it is a dead language, you can still find it spoken and written in some websites (eg this - you can find an article about Particle Physics here, too!); then, finally, I like Philosophy (in particular Scientific ones, eg Natural Philosophy, Mathematical one, modern Philosophy..). Oh, right, I forgot one last thing: I like going out with my friends - just a bunch of people, anyway, eh eh! =P

PS: I hate the world, as Valerio reminded me, eh eh!

You can contact me by: [mailto:stefano@spigler.net email @ stefano@spigler.net] website GTalk, s.spigler@gmail.com IRC, kledge @ irc.freenode.net ICQ, 263326374 YIM, s.spigler@yahoo.com MSN, s.spigler@gmail.com

title: User:S.spigler


text:
User talk:S.spigler

Hi Stefano, welcome to Wikiversity. :-) You have a number of interests - you can use the Browse or the search box on the left-hand side to search for pages that might interest you - sometimes it takes a bit of rooting around as we are still organising the place. :-) I'm adding a few links below that might be useful - but feel free to ask me anything on my talk page. Also, have you seen the Italian Wikiversity yet? It just started a few days ago. :-) Cormaggio talk 19:23, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:S.spigler


text:
User talk:FWN~enwikiversity

Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

Unfortunately, your account clashes with another account also called FWN. To make sure that both of you can use all Wikimedia projects in future, we have reserved the name FWN~enwikiversity that only you will have. If you like it, you don't have to do anything. If you do not like it, you can pick out a different name.

Your account will still work as before, and you will be credited for all your edits made so far, but you will have to use the new account name when you log in.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Yours, Keegan Peterzell Community Liaison, Wikimedia Foundation 23:36, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Renamed
 This account has been renamed as part of single-user login finalisation. If you own this account you can |log in using your previous username and password for more information. If you do not like this account's new name, you can choose your own using this form after logging in: . -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 06:08, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:FWN~enwikiversity


text: User talk:Kattyer

title: User talk:Kattyer


text:
User:JWSchmidt/Blog/20 May 2007

I have been editing wikis since 2002 and have had a user account at Wikipedia since early 2003. I think it is official; I have forgotten what it is like to start out as a wiki editor.

Culture shock
What do new Wikiversity visitors experience? I am devoted to the idea that the Wikiversity Main Page should provide a gentle entry into the wiki universe for people who have never edited a wiki. At my current draft for a newbie-friendly main page there is a link to Introduction to Wiki. I guess that introductory page should be split into:
 * 1) an initial part about browsing and finding content, and
 * 2) a part that shows new participants how to edit.But I need to try to remember what it is like to be a new wiki editor.

Newbie game
In order to make Introduction to Wiki effective, I am going to play a game. I am going to pretend to be a new visitor to Wikiversity who has never edited a wiki. To document this "game", I will keep a record of my reconstructed "newbie steps" at The newbie experience. The goal of this exercise is to force myself back into the shows of a wiki newbie so that I can be sure that the Wikiversity introductory and help pages correctly provide new Wikiversity participants with what they need.

Top level portals
Discussion at Pre-tertiary portal led to the idea that it might be time for a new way to categorize content at Wikiversity. Is Wikiversity too centered on organizing content according to the traditions of college-level educational institutions? Do we need a new set of "high-level" portals?Would each "high level portal" need its own Browse page?

Related effort

 * Service community - needs to explain/remind new visitors what the key differences are between Wikiversity and other Wikimedia sister projects.
 * Student union - needs to force students into editing
 * Wikiversity teachers - needs to be broadened beyond Wikiversity's current emphasis on college-level content.
 * Content development - needs to be integrated with the learning materials at Topic:Wikiversity.
 * All these introductory pages need to be supported by a set of short screen cast tutorials.

title: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/20 May 2007


text:
User:JWSchmidt/Blog/Archive 1

This is an archive of old topics from February 2007. More recent topics are at the main blog page and in the navigation box (to right).

Science and Protoscience
What is the difference between science, protoscience and pseudoscience? See: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/25 February 2007. --JWSchmidt 03:19, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Complementing Wikipedia
How should Wikiversity content be designed so as complement existing content at Wikipedia? See: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/23 February 2007. --JWSchmidt 15:02, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Copyleft media files
Placing licensing information in media files and software for making OGG files. See: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/21 February 2007. --JWSchmidt 17:37, 22 February 2007

Gratis vs Libre
Will the terms "gratis" and "libre" catch on for making the distinction between two type of "free" content? See: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/19 February 2007. --(UTC)User:JWSchmidt/Blog/19 February 2007

Referees
Start thinking about who to nominate as a Wikiversity Referee. See User:JWSchmidt/Blog/18 February 2007. --JWSchmidt 16:10, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki interface
How do you change the names of buttons in the wiki user interface? See User:JWSchmidt/Blog/16 February 2007. --JWSchmidt 00:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Content development projects
I made a policy page for Scope of Research at the multi-lingual Wikiversity hub. See: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/15 February 2007. --JWSchmidt 04:08, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Scope of Research
I made a policy page for Scope of Research at the multi-lingual Wikiversity hub. See: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/14 February 2007. --JWSchmidt 04:01, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Review Board
I did a major edit for the Review Board policy at the multi-lingual Wikiversity hub. See: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/13 February 2007. --JWSchmidt 01:19, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Round corners
Continuing discussions of rounded corners. See: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/12 February 2007. --JWSchmidt 00:30, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Open content and free content
Thoughts about the difference between free content and open content. See: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/11 February 2007. --JWSchmidt 00:19, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Research guidelines page at Beta
Today I edited the Research guidelines page at the Wikiversity multilingual hub. See: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/10 February 2007.

Policy page at Beta
Today I started a page for policies at the Wikiversity multilingual hub. See: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/9 February 2007. --JWSchmidt 02:28, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Blog entries on new pages
I place most of my Wikiversity blog entries on individual pages (see the navigation box to the right). I will also try to satisfy Rssbot. JWSchmidt 01:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The first few blog entries
My first Wikiversity blog entries were on a single page, now at User:JWSchmidt/Blog/Start. JWSchmidt 01:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

title: User:JWSchmidt/Blog/Archive 1


text:
Wikiversity:The newbie experience

Welcome to The Newbie Experience, a content development project in the spirit of Introduction Overhaul Taskforce.

Introduction
While this project shares some of its goals with Introduction Overhaul Taskforce, this project page is in the Topic namespace where Wikiversity content development projects normally exist. This content development project attempts to chart the problems encountered by new visitors to Wikiversity and use that information to make sure that there are good learning resources available to help new Wikiversity visitors become familiar with wiki in general and Wikiversity in particular.

Case studies
These case studies are reports by new visitors or experienced Wikiversity participants pretending to be new visitors.

User:Clueless
This is a new account for User:JWSchmidt.

Links from sister projects
Under the link to Wikiversity from the Wikipedia Main Page it says, "Free learning materials and activities". There has been a long-standing complaint about the name "wikiversity": the name might suggest to people that the Wikiversity project is an online university or otherwise biased towards college-level learning resources and biased against learning resources for pre-college students. The motto contest is trying to identify an "official" phrase to be used at links to Wikiversity from Wikimedia sister projects. The most popular choice is apparently "open learning community", but maybe if that becomes the motto then a different description should be used near sister project links to make the point that Wikiversity is for all ages. Too long. I think "Free learning materials and activities" (38 characters) is the longest "description" under any of the links to sister projects. It could be shortened to "Learning resources for all ages" (31 characters), closer in length to the second longest "Wikimedia project coordination" (30 Characters).
 * open learning community for all ages (36 characters)
 * open learning for all ages (26 characters)
 * mentioned at the Colloquium

Account creation
The page for account creation should link to Why create an account (MediaWiki:Prefs-help-email was edited, but that might not be the best placement of the link).

Main Page
Create a flashy box for Wikiversity talk:Main Page to link to Main page design changes and then archive old talk on that page. Many visitors to the Wikiversity Main Page are new to wiki and need help to understand what is going on at Wikiversity. Should the main page be a better learning resource for these new visitors? Discuss at Main page design changes.

Glossary
One of the easiest things to forget is the large amount of specialized jargon used by editors of Wikimedia Foundation wiki projects. How can Glossary be made a useful learning resource? The glossary is now linked to from Template:Opentask and Introduction to Wikiversity; maybe there should be a page linked to from Maintenance such as Wikiversity jargon, a learning project to get help with jargon and build the glossary.

title: Wikiversity:The newbie experience


text:
MediaWiki:Prefs-help-email

Why create an account?

E-mail address is optional, but it enables others to contact you through your user or user_talk page without needing to reveal your identity.

title: MediaWiki:Prefs-help-email


text:
Wikiversity talk:Main Page/Archive 4

Main Page | talk | archive

 * Archived conversations from November at Wikiversity talk:Main Page/Archive 3
 * Please do not edit these archived sections

Protection
Can we get an admin to please move-protect the Main Page? No reason for anyone but an admin to ever move it, and having that move tab up there makes it rather prone to be put on wheels. (Btw, "move=autoconfirmed" protection does nothing, since non-autoconfirmeds can't move pages any way.) AmiDaniel (talk)

 * Done - thanks for the heads up, and help. :-) Cormaggio talk 10:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Modifications to the main page
It is time again to discuss redesign of the main page. Two proposed (at freenode #wikiversity-en) ideas for the redesign are:
 * Most visitors to the Wikiversity main page are new to wiki and need help to understand what is going on at Wikiversity. The main page needs to be a resource for these new visitors.
 * It is time to have featured content on the main page with good examples that show what Wikiversity is about.

You can help at Main page design changes. --JWSchmidt 17:52, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Interdepartmental Linking
If there is a better place to do this, please tell me and I'll move it elsewhere.

It seems to me that Wikiversity can profit by using a lot of interdepartmental linking. Many of the engineering, math, and science departments will share material, especially when it comes to introductory material. It seems to me, that it would be best to not repeat this material over and over in each individual department, but have all of the departments link to the one page, and then add their own supplements as necessary. For example, instead of having the Math, Physics, and Engineering departments each have their own page on how to take a cross product, instead have one page (say in the math department), that the other departments can then link to as a lesson. The more people that see a page, the more edits it will get, and the better overall it will become. Howeman 18:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Good point. Feel free to place this reminder on every "School:" and Topic:" content development project page: "Learning materials and learning projects can be used by multiple departments. Cooperate with other departments that use the same learning resource." (source) --JWSchmidt 18:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Multidimensional
One thing has bugged me for a while... how are we a "multidimensional social organization"? How exactly does that work?--Rayc 00:13, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it is trying to reflect the fundamental role of collaborative webpage editing in a wiki website. We collaborate on many "levels"; in editing individual lessons, working on content development projects in the "School:" and "Topic:" namespaces, at the level of Wikiversity-wide planning and policy and at the level of integrating Wikiversity with other projects. --JWSchmidt 00:20, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * On the phrase itself, I've a feeling that it was one of Reswik's - maybe you could ask him to see what he meant? Cormaggio beep 10:43, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Browse link too small?
well i think that the lik to get to the course content and browse the subject schhols etc is way too small. it needs to be bigger and more centeral in my opinion Tigerboyce 20:37, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Are you talking about the link that is in the left hand navigation side-bar or one of the links that is on the main page? --JWSchmidt 13:58, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * on the main page under the welcome area Tigerboyce 20:37, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I made the text of that section of the main page larger (see image to the right). --JWSchmidt 20:57, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * yep looks loads clearer. good job

Division of Culinary Arts
Hey, I'm starting to work on a division here, and wondered if anyone would like to help. Thanks! Blast 15,01,07 2246 (UTC -5)

Question about log-in
I was just wondering..is a wikipedia account the same as a wikiversity account? Are they interchangeable?Please call me cupy.71.143.188.187 03:22, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No, you have to create a new account here. You can use the same username that you have at Wikipedia. --JWSchmidt 03:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks71.143.188.187 03:29, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Help New Wikiversity in Malayalam (ml)
Hi, I would like to start new Wikiversity in my language (ml.wikiversity.org) from scratch. Can any one help me? Thank you --Sadik Khalid 09:38, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Sadik, you can start an "incubation" of a new Wikiversity at the beta wiki. If that is successful and you get the required number of participants (10), then you can request that it be set up as an individual project on the Meta wiki (requests, instructions). Good luck! Cormaggio beep 10:39, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Dear Cormaggio Thank you very much --Sadik Khalid 14:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You're welcome! If you want to ask any more questions, you can ask me directly on my talk page, or post them to the Colloquium. Cheers, Cormaggio beep 16:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

would like to join santhosh

Domain name
Hello. In exploring things related to Wikiversity, I figured this would be the best place to post this message. The domain www.wikiversity.com is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, but it leads to a page saying "This wiki does not exist", and a list of sister projects. Shouldn't this be corrected, to lead to the same place www.wikiversity.org leads to? Alex43223Talk 21:48, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The page that is shown at www.wikiversity.com should probably be updated. Hopefully anyone seeing that page can just follow the first link on that page to the more modern list of Wikimedia Foundation projects. --JWSchmidt 22:22, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

 * "Without having seen this I'd say from a newcomers perspective this would be very confusing, wikiversity needs to have simple access... people will continue going to wikiversity.com I'd say the only other way to go would be wikiversity.edu I'm not sure what the rules are for obtaining a ".edu" address, but besides ".com" that would be the only thing people will remember. Good Luck and Thank You to the Creators of Wikiversity! What an exciting project. - Student in Central California :)"

title: Wikiversity talk:Main Page/Archive 4


text:
User:Sean gorter

About Me
I am a member of.

title: User:Sean gorter


text: Category:User pages

title: Category:User pages


text:
Template:Naming

Usage

 * It detects the namespace and adjusts the wording accordingly
 * Please do not subst: this template.
 * The simplest way to add this template to an article is to copy and paste

into the article.
 * Alternatively  will suffice, a robot will add the date.

title: Template:Naming


text:
Philosophy of History/History's Vital Themes and Narratives

''Originally Published by the Staff of the Bradley Commission on History in Schools in History Matters! Volume II. Posted with permission from the National Council for History Education''

This series of articles appeared between August 1989 and January 1990. The articles expand upon the Vital Themes identified by the Bradley Commissioners in their booklet, Building A History Curriculum: Guidelines for Teaching History in Schools. The Commissioners believe these themes should be goals in any history course, regardless of its specific content or time period. All history study aims at these Vital Themes, albeit reached through different means and at varying levels of sophistication in different courses.

The themes have been particularly helpful to curriculum committees in schools because they serve as goals, provide a directional compass, and give guidance when deciding what to leave out or what to put in: does the content or topic under consideration help us illustrate one of the six vital themes, or is it peripheral, non-illustrative, or marginal? In addition, the six themes have been used in the "spiral curriculum development" approach, where a different example of each of the six themes is developed at each grade level, Kindergarten through Grade Twelve, resulting in a cumulative history curriculum that does not suffer from the ailment of redundancy for which many past curricula were faulted. Yet, while distinct in their emphasis, the themes reflect the basic integration of the human experience, for example the "Civilizations" in theme #1 will not be fully understood without reference to "geography and technology" in theme #2 and the "values, ideas, and institutions" of theme #3. Each theme is a matter of emphasis and there will always be overlap among the Vital Themes.


text:
Philosophy of History/Civilization, Cultural Diffusion, and Innovation

Bradley Commissioner, William H. McNeill, discusses implications of the theme "Civilization, Cultural Diffusion, and Innovation."

The central theme of human history on earth is the accumulation of human skills and power over nature and over one another. This is the overriding theme of the history of the world. I believe history is the story of how one group of humans invented-then exploited-new techniques and ideas to attain superior power; of how that spread to other peoples across time until some new people, somewhere else, bringing new skills and ideas to bear, improved upon the first model and became in turn a center of radiation of their patterns of skill-and so on ad infinitum, with a plurality of centers arising very soon within the varied face of the earth, down to our own time. And now we have seen first the U.S. and then Japan take industrial primacy-and may be about to see Japan dethroned in its turn by other Pacific Rim countries. This theme of the accumulation of human skills and power, of Civilization, Cultural Diffusion, and Innovation, must be included in any history course. It is the human story on Earth.

The story is relatively straightforward: human beings first became the most efficient hunters and moved to the top of the food chain in ancient Africa by learning to use tools-and, probably, by using languages to assure cooperation and to sharpen observation. Next they learned to use animal skins to keep warm in colder climates, and so spread rapidly round the earth. This was a geographic shift without parallel in biological evolution.

Then, in agriculture human being in different parts of the world began to acquire knowledge of various plants and skills of cultivation. A noticeable series of improvements in agriculture occurred thereafter: from slash-and-burn to permanent fields with the plow and fallowing. Then there was the diffusion of crops from one part of earth to another, including as the most dramatic, the spread of American food crops after 1500.

The story of human expansion within the ecosystem is quite familiar. However, it is necessary to put the main landmarks together into a time pattern, and explain how they fit together into a pattern of increasing human power over nature, allowing larger and larger numbers of human beings to live at the same time on the surface of the earth. Yet it is also a story with setbacks, for instance: the salting of early irrigation fields or the erosion of the Mediterranean.

A goal of history is to show the consequences that flowed when people and ideas crossed previously insulating barriers from time to time. Of course other dimensions of human experience in the natural world could be added: the impact of infectious disease, for instance; the diffusion of skills; or the emergence first of a series of civilizations, then of an ecumenical interactive whole, beginning about 1,000 A.D.

An Example of how Civilization, Cultural Diffusion, Innovation might be stranded through the Elementary:

K: Children of Other Lands and Times Colonial children in America, pioneer children, children in Ancient Egypt, children in medieval Europe

1. Families Now and Long Ago Sumerian family, Roman family, family in feudal Europe and Japan, modern families in USA

2. Local History: Neighborhoods and Communities (adapt to your location) historic landmarks, oral history, field trips to historical museums

3. Urban History: How Cities Began and Grew life in colonial communities in NE, MW, SE, SW, FW; life in rural community in 1800s; growth of cities, suburbs; historical past of selected cities in USA today; history of selected cities of the world

4. State History and Geography: Continuity and Change early colonization of our state, growth of cities in our state, innovations in our state that have spread to other states, ideas from other cultures that have come to our state

5. National History and Geography: Exploration to 1865 cultures of American Indian groups, early American colonial settlements, growth of cities in our country, ideas explorers and colonists brought with them

6. World History and Geography: The Growth of Civilization Aztecs, Mayas, Incas; ancient Sumer, Egypt, Indus River Valley; Greece and Rome; development of cities in Indus Valley, Latin America, Sumer; Songhai, Mali, Benin of Africa; medieval civilizations of Europe, Africa, Asia.


text:
Philosophy of History/Human Interaction With the Environment

In this article Paul A. Gagnon, Principal Investigator for the Bradley Commission, discusses the theme “Human Interaction With The Environment,” placing history and geography in an inseparable matrix of time and place.’

Early in its report, the Bradley Commission set a major challenge for historians and teachers of history everywhere. Historical study, it said, should have as its principal aim the development of modes of thoughtful judgment, “habits of mind” that embodied, but also reached well beyond, the skill of critical thinking. One of these habits was to understand and to apply to history’s turning points, the close relationship between geography and history as a “matrix of time and place,” a context for events. And again, under “Vital Themes and Narratives,” the Commission set forth human interaction with the environment as one of the six fundamental themes to be developed in the study of American History, Western Civilization, and World History.

In all three areas, the Commission said, students should first grasp the choices made possible (and limited) by climate, resources, and location, and then explore how the choices actually made were affected by the given society’s particular culture, values, interests, and ways of decision-making, and how certain choices were encouraged or excluded by other, sometimes outside, forces at work, even by the vagaries of powerful individual personalities. It is easy enough to state this proposition in general terms, and even to win agreement for using the marriage of history and geography as the continuing core of the social studies in our schools. But it is sometimes not so obvious how one may apply it to particular courses, grade by grade. Perhaps a few examples will help.

In the early grades, the student of very different ways of life of Native American groups can most memorably be rooted in the different environments to which they had to adapt, even in locations relatively close to each other, not to mention the vast differences between plains and woodlands. In the early history of the United States, subgroups of the history class may “settle” the different colonies, and lay out the promising and unpromising geographical features of their respective locations. One outgrowth of such an exercise is to explain those conditions of climate, soil, resources and population that encouraged the spread of slave labor in the American South and helped to discourage it in the North. The long consequences of that are enormous, and tragic, down to our own day.

Tracing the routes of the explorers, and reliving their adventures, is a continuing confrontation with geography and the elements on one side and human will (and often frail technology) on the other. An extension of this exercise is to trace the routes of immigrants from their homes of origin to the New World and to the localities of their settlement. Which of the students’ ancestors (or present day families) were able to find new homes very like their old homes in climate and resources? Which were unable to, and why?

Student military buffs will want to analyze the geographical advantages and disadvantages of North and South in the Civil War, and how well or badly the governments and commanders exploited them. What of a crucial battlefield such as Gettysburg or Vicksburg? What part was played by roads, rivers, and terrain, given the weapons, transport and communications of those days? In the realm of economic development, what geographical advantages did American industry enjoy in its remarkable expansion after the Civil War? Do contemporary developing nations enjoy any of the same? How does one account for great economic contrasts between societies which have largely similar geographical conditions?

Such questions are particularly useful in following world history. What forces and choices allowed island peoples like the British and Japanese to develop world power seemingly out of proportion to their resources at hand? In ancient history, the significance of river valleys is a fundamental starting-point, to be followed by the sharp contrasts between different cultures’ adaptation to them.

Other questions abound. How did their geographical location affect the fate and outlook of the Jewish people, and how are these reflected in the Old Testament? How were climate, soil, resources and geography instrumental in the decline and fall of Rome? How did these both help and obstruct the unification of Chinese empires? And mainly obstruct the unification of Europe up to modern times?

What was the role of geography in the rise of Renaissance Italy, and in its subsequent decline and insecurity? Why did Prussia and Poland develop such different political and military systems in response to very similar geographical problems? Why Charles XII, Napoleon and Hitler all fail to grasp the problems posed by Russian geography and climate? What are the chances for human choice and ingenuity to overcome those forces of climate and geography that produce famine?

Are there lessons to be learned from the past? Can particular human responses to environmental crises in history help us to frame sensible questions and choices in an era of unprecedented ecological problems across the globe?

That these questions are but a tiny few among all those we could ask as we study the past is proof enough that human life is caught up in the “matrix of time and place,” as a never-ending drama of human interaction with the environment that we shall all have to understand much better if we are to preserve our freedom of choice and exercise it responsibly.


text:
Philosophy of History/Values, Beliefs, Political Ideas and Institutions

This is the third in the series of Vital Themes; Bradley Commissioner Michael Kammen discusses the importance of the theme “Values, Beliefs, Political Ideas and Institutions.” While examples are drawn from U.S. History, they could have been from World History as well.

Careful study of these concepts is essential for two inseparable reasons: their substantive significance and what they can teach our students about history as a process, that is, a fascinating pattern of change over time. Take, for example, American assumptions about the proper role of government in society. Back when America was first colonized, the Puritans assumed that government had a responsibility to regulate the economy and closely scrutinize the public and private behavior by individuals. Less than two centuries alter, however, Thomas Jefferson developed a notion that was diametrically the opposite – that government is best which governs least – and his understanding gained very wide credence for about 140 years. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal resulted in an ideological revolution and the revived expectation that government should have an activist role – a persuasion that many (but not all) Americans have doubted during the past decade. How and why those important transformations in American political values have occurred over the past 360 years is critical to any informed understanding of political culture in the United States.

The study of these ideas and institutions is also crucial in helping students appreciate certain anomalies in our culture as well as gaps between our ideals and realities. With respect to prevailing orthodoxies about government intervention, for instance, one must note that shrewd Puritan mercahnts invariably invested in those endeavors least regulated at any given moment by colonial government. And during the nineteenth-century age of laissez-faire, railroad entrepreneurs demanded and expected all sorts of favors from government: land grants, tax breaks, other forms of permission and encouragement. Values and realities have often been out of synch; and the historical impact of one acting upon the other provides a dramatics narrative.

For a final example I turn to the famous utterance by James Madison in Federalist paper number 51 (1778): ''Justice is the end of government. It is the end [ultimate goal] of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.'' We traditionally view trial by jury as a vital component of our system of justice. Yet many people believe that the jury system is, in fact, too slow and cumbersome for our litigious society; and that a tribunal of professional judges is more likely to “do justice” than twelve amateurs.

Be that as it may, my own recent experience as a juror in a complex murder trial did much to restore my own faith in the venerable jury system in general. I have reason to believe that I am not alone in undergoing a shift from skepticism to belief. There is great educational potential inherent in that sort of “conversion”: the gap between what we read in books and in the press, and what we experience as participants in the process of government – in this case the administration of justice. Before we ever get to such gaps, however, students must understand how the jury system evolved; how it has worked in the recent decades; how American attitudes towards justice have varied, from Madison’s statement in Federalist 51 to the harsh application of “Judge Lynch” in frontier America.

All of these historical issues, anomalies, and problems provide a rich menu for teachers to offer their students: readings, classroom discussions, simulated situations, and assignments to be explored in th students’ home communities. American values, beliefs, political ideas and institutions are always undergoing change. The best way to comprehend that phenomenon in our own time is to come to grips with it historically.

Examples of episodes form which the theme Values, Beliefs, Political Ideas and Institutions might be drawn in American History Courses:

Pre-Colonial: European and Indian ideas about land ownership; th estory of the House of Burgesses in Virginia.

Revolution and Constitution: James Otis, PAtrick Henry and opposition to the Stamp Actl a biography of Thomas Jefferson with special focus on May-to-August, 1776.

Early 19th Century: Role of 2nd Great Awakening in abolition, temperance, suffrace, public education movements; story of Jackson vs. the Bank of the U.S.

Civil War and Reconstruction: Relationship between the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the beginning of the Republican Party; the political implicaitons of the Battle of Antietam; Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address and the course of Reconstruction.

Late 19th Century: Immigration and E. Lazarus' poem on the State of Liberty; the story of the Oklahoma land rush, story of the Pendleton Act/Civil Service.

20th Century: War with Spain; the story of the Progressive Party; neutrality, isolation, involvement and leadership in foreign affairs from G. Washington to T. Roosevelt to Wilson to FDR; story of th eauto in American society.


text:
Philosophy of History/Conflict and Cooperation

Bradley Commissioner, Robert H. Ferrell, discusses the theme “Conflict and Cooperation.” Examples show where this theme could be developed in the elementary school years, but their development and reinforcement would continue in grades 7 through 12 as well.

A look into any era of the human story reveals two recurring patterns of behavior. Conflict between cooperation among individuals and societies are themes that are as basic to history as they are to human nature. Although they appear to be mutually exclusive, we can see again and again that certain cooperative efforts can result in conflict (for example the sstem of alliances in pre-World War I Europe), and conflict can draw humans into cooperative efforts.

We may today be in the midst of such cooperation growing out of conflict (or at leasts potential conflict). For two generations now the primary problem of world politics has been rapidly escalating danger of nuclear accident or war, which could cause deaths numbering from tens of thousands to tens of millions. Since July16, 1945, when the United States at Alamogordo, New Mexico, detonated a plutonium nuclear device, the peoples of the world have been in danger. The new regime in Russia promises a lessening of the balance of terror, butt it is too early to place more than a modicum of faith in developments there.

The hope of eliminating the nuclear problem lies in the study of history, of how we got to here from there, in the belief that we then can take measures to lessen the danger. This entails going back at least to the era of the Renaissance and Reformation and the rie of the nation states, then of nationalism beginning with the American and French revolutions. Here American history offers remarkable instruction. People came to America for reasons of religion and economics (that is, land), but many came to escape Europe’s wars, what President George Washington described as the Continents’s ordinary combinations and collisions. For them the harried voyage from the Old World to the New removed them from despotism with its wars into a new Eden of republicanism, democracy, and peace. Throughout the nineteenth century, with exception of the War of 1812, America as the Englishman James Bryce wrote, sailed on the summer sea. As the present-day historian C. Vann Woodward described what happened, America enjoyed free security, made possible by geography and the British navy. But then came the 20th century in which Europe’s troubles inexorably spread to America. It no longer was possible, as Jeffersonians had hoped, to make America as isolated from Europe as was China. Since 1945 nuclear weapons have spread to at least six nations. Non-nuclear wars have broken out regionally. Technologically they have advanced rapidly, using the latest non-nuclear explosives and carriers.

How to resolve, in peace, the intense danger of nuclear escalation of human conflicts? This is an essential question facing the human race today. We know from studying history that human beings will have conflicts. But we also know from studying history that humans have solved problems by cooperating in times of conflict.

Conflict and cooperation are vital themes of human nature that we learn from history. Never in history has it been so important that we understand both.

An example of how Conflict and Cooperation might be stranded through the Elemenatry Pattern B from Building a History Curriculum:

K: Learning and Working Now and Long Ago

Children learn to help in ancient cultures; tales from the Brothers Grimm; myths/legends/folktales (Arabian Nights, Paul Bunyon, Casey Jones); Aesops fables

GR 1: Child’s Place in Time and Space

Stories of children in ancient China; pages/squires in Medieval times; read-aloud stories such as Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

GR 2: People Who Make A Difference

Biographies of Nobel Peace Prize winners and how they met challenges of conflict (Theodore Roosevelt, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr., others); stories of our grandparents and ancestors

GR 3: Continuity and Change:  Local and National History

How/why people form and settle local communities, cooperation within and among communities (e.g. history of the United Way project, history of transportation); how/why people divided labor in early communities

GR 4: A Changing State

Organizing early settlements of our state; role of our state in national conflicts; our state in interacting with other regions of the world

GR 5: U.S. History and Geography:  Making a New Nation

Religion/economics/politics in colonial America; the Revolution; writing the Constitution; opening the frontier; biographies of Paul Revere, George Washington, John Hancock

GR 6: World History and Geography:  Ancient Civilization

Building cities in ancient Sumer, Egypt, Indus River Valley; polis of Athens; Incas, Mayas, Aztecs; biography of Alexander the Great


text:
Philosophy of History/Comparative History of Major Developments

This is the fifth in a series of articles in which the historians of the Bradley Commission elaborate on the meaning of the six vital themes; Gordon A. Craig discusses the theme: Comparative History of Major Developments.” Comparison is a particularly useful tool of analysis, and, it is hoped, will become a “habit of the mind.”

As these lines are being written, one of the most remarkable developments since the end of the Second World War is taking place, the transformation of Eastern Europe, as the various Warsaw Pact nations turn from totalitarian government to reform regimes and democratic socialism. The future historians of this process will depend heavily upon the comparative method to explain it, for it will be by means of careful description of the various totalitarian governments and a careful assessment of similarities and differences between them that they will be able to weigh the importance of such things as the role of nationality, bureaucratic structure, economic performance and vulnerability, ideological conviction, generational attitudes, and external influences (Western television, for example, or perestroika) in determining their relative susceptibility to pressure for reform and the reasons why the ruling party in Hungary, for example, reacted differently from that in East Germany. Comparison is a useful tool of analysis for both political scientists and historians, although they tend to use it differently. Political scientists are more interested in the similarities that it reveals than the differences, and have demonstrated, by the use of structured comparative analysis of similar phenomena, that correlations between variables may have causal significance or predictive value. Historians are apt to be more interested in differences. They are willing to admit that revolutions in history have so many common factors that one may speak, somewhat loosely to be sure, of there being an anatomy of a revolution. But they are still interested in asking why, despite their similarities, the French Revolution issued in a military dictatorship and the Russian Revolution did not, and why the American Revolution was so different from either of the others, and to what extent this was true because its leaders were taking as their model the English Revolution of the seventeenth century. Comparison is a highly effective means of restoring precise meaning to terms that have lost it through slipshod usage. One has a clearer understanding, for example, of the course of international affairs in the nineteenth century and the coming of the First World War if one realizes that between the Congress of Vienna and 1914 the nature of the European balance of power was not constant but variable, moving from a flexible system of interpenetrating combinations of lightly armed powers, to a complicated network of secret alliances controlled by the manipulations of a single power (the Bismarck system), to a polarized but highly unstable system of armed coalitions that was constantly threatening to collapse and finally did. Comparison of the relative weight of armamaments, military systems, economic competition, and nationalist feeling and ideological zeal in the three different systems also throws light on the progressive weakening of the supports of peace. Comparison is no less important in illuminating aspects of social, economic and cultural history. It is well known that the extension of education to the masses was one of the great achievements of nineteenth century liberalism, but it is nevertheless instructive o compare the record of the liberal paries of Switzerland, France and Great Britain in this respect and to note the relative foot-dragging that took place in the last case and the different arguments that were put forward for education bills in the three countries, for this tells us a good deal about their values, their economic requirements in the industrial age, and even their systems of social stratification. Similarly, a comparison of the emergence of the social welfare state in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States raises the interesting question of why the most democratic of these three societies has been most reluctant to grant social security to its citizens, also a cultural question but one, in addition, that involves analysis of the relationship between the state and the individual in the three countries. It is because comparative history raises provocative questions of this nature that it is such an admirable tool of classroom instruction, constantly inviting students not merely to accept the past but to engage actively in the process of seeking to understand it.


text:
Philosophy of History/Patterns of Social and Political Interaction

''Bradley Commissioner Leon Litwack discusses Historians and “The Inarticulate,” a topic stimulated by the theme “Patterns of Social and Political Interaction.” He shows how the study of American history should result in an understanding of social patterns and of the political relationships that interact with the social. Professor Litwack also indicates the need to include a wide variety of cultural documentation to learn about both sides of such interactions.'' When the Bradley Commission noted “the new prominence of women, minorities, and the common people in the study of history, and their relation to political power and influential elites,” it acknowledged the far reaching changes in writing, teaching, and documentation of the American past. Until recently, the American history the typical student learned in high school or college was the history of exceptional people, mostly white, literate men. If women, racial minorities, or common people appeared at all, it was largely as picturesque appendages, not as active shapers of their own history; their experience was not only peripheral but said to be impossible to reclaim, because traditional methods of historical scholarship emphasized the importance of records and documents which the “inarticulate”—working class racial and ethnic communities – have not usually kept. Historians played a significant role in creating, shaping, and reinforcing racial, gender, and ethnic biases; they succeeded in miseducating several generations of Americans. The history they wrote did have consequences. The ways in which the past is interpreted often have had a profound impact on the present. The traditional view of Reconstruction in American history, for example, as a period of unrelieved debauchery and black rule, helped to explain why blacks were unfit to participate in political life and why the South needed to eliminate them as voters and office-holders; it not only rationalized the South’s denial of constitutional rights to black people but northern acquiescence in that denial. And for nearly a century this distorted image of Reconstruction shaped white southern responses to any threat to white supremacy, to any proposal to end segregation and readmit blacks as voters. To provide a deeper understanding of the cultural and racial diversity of American society, the quality, depth, and resourcefulness of the response of racial minorities, women, and ordinary people to their place in that society, it becomes necessary to reassess the traditional documentation of the past, to appreciate the diverse ways in which the “inarticulate” have related their experiences and communicated their feelings. It has often been their music, in their folk beliefs and proverbs, in their humor, in their hero traditions, in their language and dialect, in their superstitions, in their art and dances that people have expressed their innermost thoughts and preoccupations, their sorrows, frustrations, and joys, their triumphs and defeats. That scholars and teachers neglected these sources revealed not only a lack of historical imagination but ethnocentric complacency and racial chauvinism. In the conclusion of his work DEEP BLUES, Robert Palmer asked, “How much thought can be hidden a few short lines of poetry? How much history can be transmitted by pressure on a guitar string?” And he answered, “The thought of generations, the history of every human being who’s ever felt the blues come down like showers of rain.”  In that spirit, teachers need to instill in their students an appreciation of the complexities and varieties of cultural documentation, the enormous possibilities those documents afford us to bring into our historical consciousness people ordinarily left outside the framework of history. The kinds of records found in most documentary readers – state papers, legislative enactments, court decisions, speeches and proclamations – reveal only a fragment of the past and do little to illuminate the character and culture of a people, the range and depth of the human experience. History is not a set of indigestible facts and “great events” arrayed in chronological order – no sooner memorized than forgotten. Students need to be able to feel the facts to which they are exposed; they need to be engaged in the social complexity and diversity of the past. Teachers face an equally formidable task in helping their students to overcome racial and ethnic stereotypes and cultural parochialism. That challenge has seldom taken on such critical proportions as it does today. Racism remains the most debilitating virus in the American system, deeply embedded in our culture and politics (as graphically revealed in the last presidential election), and its consequences spill over into almost every facet of American life. It is nourished by historical and cultural illiteracy.

''Professor Litwack uses examples from U.S. History in his preceding essay; however, this theme can be used in World History as well. Here are examples of topics from which the theme Patterns of Social and Political Interaction might be drawn in World History courses: The evolution and distinctive characteristics of major Asian, African, and American pre-Columbian societies; Varying patterns of resistance to or acceptance of industrialization and its accompanying effects, in representative European and non-European societies; The interplay of geography and local culture in the responses of major societies to outside forces of all kinds; Medieval society and institutions; relations with Islam; feudalism and the evolution of representative governement; The European ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries and their global influence: liberalism, republicanism, social democracy, Marxism, nationalism, Communism, Fascism, Nazism; The new 19th century imperialism, ultimate decolonization, and the consequences of both for colonizers and colonized; The rise of Islam as a movement not just of the Middle East but of te whole region of arid lands stretching from Iberia to India; and the surge of Islamic expansion in Eurasia and in Africa in the 16th century; The near industrial revolution in China under the Sung Dynasty and its effects all across Eurasia.''


text:
Philosophy of History/History's Habits of the Mind

Developed by the National Council for History Education and posted with their permission.

Courses in history, geography, and government should be designed to take students well beyond formal skills of critical thinking, to help them through their own active learning to:

 * Understand the significance of the past to their own lives, both private and public, and to their society.
 * Distinguish between the important and the inconsequential, to develop the discriminating memory needed for a "discerning judgment" in public and personal life.
 * Perceive past events and issues as people experienced them at the time, to develop historical empathy as opposed to present-mindedness.
 * Acquire at the same time a comprehension of diverse cultures and shared humanity.
 * Understand how things happen and how things change, how human intentions matter, but also how their consequences are shared by the means of carrying them out, in a tangle of purpose and process.
 * Comprehend the interplay of change and continuity, and avoid assuming that either is somehow more natural, or more to be expected, than the other.
 * Prepare to live with uncertainties and exasperating, even perilous, unfinished busines, realizing that not all problems have solutions
 * Grasp the complexity of historical causation, respect particularity, and avoid excessively abstract generalizations.
 * Appreciate the often tentative nature of judgments about the past, and thereby avoid the temptation to seize upon particular "lessons" of history as a cure for present ills.
 * Recognize the importance of individuals who have made a difference in history, and the significance of personal character for both good and ill.
 * Appreciate the force of the non-rational, the irrational, and the accidental, in history and human affairs.
 * Understand the relationship between geography and history as a matrix of time and place, and as a context for events.
 * Read widely and critically in order to recognize the difference between fact and conjecture, between evidence and assertion, and thereby frame useful questions.


text:
Philosophy of History/How to Write History Better

Prof. William E.Leuchtenburg, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
I do not want to be presumptuous because I am certainly not the source of all knowledge on this. As a matter of fact I can boil down everything I know about writing into three sentences:

1. Check every single verb on each page of your manuscript mechanically to eliminate the passive voice, if at all possible.

2. Avoid repeated words, not only in the same sentence or paragraph, but within the entire paper.

3. Make sure your topic sentence is what the paragraph is about.

Prof. Mary Beth Norton, Alger Professor of American History, Cornell University
1) Read everything aloud to yourself. Such a strategy helps you to "hear" awkward constructions and word repetitions.

2) Do not use weak transitional words and phrases, such as "however" and "we see that. . ."

3) Avoid the "this-it syndrome"--that is, the use of vague terms without obvious referants. Especially avoid the "lonely this," as in "she wanted this above all" or "this is. . ."

Byron Hollinshead, President, American Historical Publications
One should always look for exactly the right verb to describe an action, rather than picking out any old verb and adding an adjective or adverb to it; e.g. try "stroll" instead of "walk leisurely."

Will Fitzhugh, Editor and Publisher of The Concord Review
To write history well, make it a practice to read good historical writing. A good place to start would be the essays in The Concord Review.

Thomas M. Preisser, Professor and Chair, Department of Humanities, Government, and Modern Languages, Sinclair Community College, Dayton (OH)
Make sure your manuscript has a thesis which you develop and support.

Stephen Webre, Chair, Dept. of History, Louisiana Tech University
1) Write with nouns and verbs. Consider all adjectives and adverbs guilty until proven innocent. Use them only when they make a necessary contribution to meaning. One adverb that fails this test is "very." Avoid it.

2) Keep the noun and verb close together.

3) Place the time reference (for example, the date of the event being discussed), at the beginning of the sentence or the clause.

4) You need a clearly stated thesis, but you also need what Alfred Hitchcock used to call a "MacGuffin." The MacGuffin is the thing the paper is about. Know what it is and do not lose sight of it. If there's something in your paper that's not about the MacGuffin, take it out. Know the difference between a thesis and a MacGuffin.