CAL Online

Lesson HJ2
Starting Your History Journal

Writing down your ideas about history will help you to remember important events and it will help you to personalize history (the more you can imagine yourself in an historical event, the better you will remember it). So, as part of the online course, you will be completing two quick writes each week as part of this course. (If you already started this in the first semester, then you?ll just continue the journal). The quick write questions in this lesson are different than they were in the first semester. You may know something about the questions or you may not. The important part is to write as much as you do know or think you know. This will help in learning about what you are studying!

Some famous people have written about the importance of writing about history:

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I'll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I'll give you a stock clerk.
- J.C. Penney

We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.
- George Bernard Shaw

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
--Mark Twain

Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.
--Mark Twain

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.
- David C. McCullough

In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition.

- Peter F. Drucker

History is the record of an encounter between character and circumstance
- Donald Creighton, Canadian historian (1902-1979).

To start your History Journal download the document attached below. Save it to your desktop so you will remember where it is. There will be at least one History Journal entry for each Module so you will be going back and updating this document as you start a new Module.

For this Journal entry (HJ2.1) answer the following questions:

1. Why is it important to study and understand history?

2. Why do you think it is important for people who are living to chronicle the times they are living in? (i.e. keep a journal)?

3. If you could read the personal journal of any person from history who would it be and why?

Click here for the History Journal

Assignment HJ2 - History Journal

Now that you have your HISTORY JOURNAL set, here is what to write for your first journal entry. Be sure to copy and paste these questions into your History Journal and then write your responses – no more than two sentences per response.

In 1850 what advantages did America’s geography provide that aided in it’s Industrial Revolution?
What resources do you think are necessary for industrial growth?
In 1850 did the United States have the resources you feel are necessary? If so, which ones, where were they and how much?

A. Email your History Quick Write responses to your teacher in an email (copy and paste your responses from Word to the email message window – NO attachments.)
B. Go to assignment 2.01 and ATTACH your History Journal.