The timeline doesn’t seem to be such a good tool for big questions – except, how big a question seems to you has more to do with your knowledge base going into the matter than it does with any absolute measure. So the things that are the hardest for me to post about are the things that I know the MOST about. On the other hand, it’s an absolute gas to hunt down new bits and put them up. As a way of encouraging and organizing discovery, it seems delightful to me. As a way of writing a history book, it seems very cumbersome.
The best posts seem to start off in the texts we are reading. So, for example, a student might try to find out what Emma’s dress would have actually looked like, beyond merely reading Flaubert’s description. Then this question leads one on an information boomerang, as they verify and explore. By the time the information is condensed into a post, it might be somewhat removed from the point of departure. At that point, the best posts tie everything back together, bringing the context back to the text.
So, take a picture and some facts, briefly introduce the phenomenon, and then tie it directly to something from the course. What Hugo thought about capital punishment, for example:
Choosing an interesting fact, and packaging it in a pertinent way, and checking sources so that you don’t post something invented by deranged net varmints – these demand the kind of critical reading and evaluation of information that we hope to be teaching in all of our classes. Fabulous.
