The focus this week will be on orienting you to the course.  You should spend considerable time familiarizing yourself with the layout of my web-site and with the assignment structure for HIS 120.  Note that you will be using two web-sites for the course.  The main site will be my public-access teaching site, Mister Dan's Page.  You will be using it to access all the course resources and assignment instructions.  You will be using the second web-site, the HIS 120 Brightspace Page to participate in the weekly Discussion Forums and to submit all your assignments.

Your responsibilities for the week are the following:

1)  Spend extensive time orienting yourself to the World History To 1000 CE section of Mister Dan's Page.  ( https://www.misterdann.com/contentsworldhistory.htm   )  I appreciate that there is a great deal of material on the web-site.  It is intended as a major resource and you will only be asked to access a small portion of what is listed there.  The most important sections of the web-site for HIS 120 are the Syllabus Page, the Assignments Page, and the Discussion Topics page.

Carefully read the syllabus.  You will be accessing the syllabus throughout the semester.  Make sure you regularly access the Digital Syllabus which is in the bottom right corner of the HIS 120 Homepage rather than the Face-to-Face Syllabus, since there are some differences between them.  Note that the Syllabus not only outlines weekly responsibilities and the assignment structure, but that it also includes embedded links within the weekly schedule that open up to the relevant course materials.

I have divided the Weekly Schedule within the Syllabus Schedule into recurrent categories: Orientation for the Week; Discussion Forum Contributions; Reading Assignments; Listening And Viewing; and Optional Extras.

I will try to post the Orientation for the Week by the Sunday preceding the upcoming week.  It will outline your academic responsibilities for the week and is a good place to begin each week.

The Discussion Forum Contributions mention the themes that are featured in that week's Brightspace Discussion Forums.  You do not need to contribute to every forum.  I will be evaluating these comments at least as much upon their thoughtfulness as upon their volume.  But this is an important part of the course and I do expect you to contribute on a weekly basis to the Forums.  I will divide the Forums into two categories: the History Playhouse Forums and the other topics.  The former category will ask for your comments upon the different course documentaries, one fundamental component of the curriculum.

The Reading Assignments include any required article or book readings, but also will include the weekly Discussion Topic themes. I do not expect you to read all the resources on each individual Discussion Topic but rather to devote perhaps an hour to careful study of some of the resources provided.  I will often post some questions at the top of a Discussion Topic but these are meant more as questions to ponder rather than as questions I expect you to answer in writing.

You should write Journal entries on those Discussion Topics that interest you, and should also spend more time studying these particular topics.

The Listening And Viewing Assignments include links to that week's video or audio documentaries.  These will serve as a substitute for lectures.

I appreciate that at times it may not be possible to get through all the Reading, Listening and Viewing Assignments for a particular week.  I designed the Optional Extras category as a way of not overloading you with even more responsibilities while yet simultaneously highlighting a number of other valuable resources.  Do dig deeply into this section of the course if you have the time to do so.  There are some excellent materials there.  It also is appropriate to substitute something within the Optional Extras for a regular Reading, Listening or Viewing responsibility if you notice something of particular interest but lack the time to access the regular items and the Optional Extras during that week.

There are three required books in the course 1) Tony Perrottet, Naked Olympics: the True Story Of The Ancient Games (New York: Random House, 2004); 2) Lesley Hazleton, After The Prophet: The Epic Story Of The Shia-Sunni Split (New York: Anchor Books, 2009); and 3) David Graeber and David Wengrow, Dawn Of Everything: A New History Of Humanity (Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada, 2021).  They will play an important role in our course.  All three books are available for purchase through the NIC Bookstore.  I have also provided links to purchasable e-text editions near the top of the Syllabus Page.  It is fundamentally important that you purchase both Naked Olympics and After The Prophet since they will serve as the focus points for two significant assignments.

The Assignments page includes the Due Dates for the different assignments and descriptions of the individual assignments.  The Approaching The Course link on  the Assignment Page provides a basic overview to HIS 120 and is another good place to orient yourself to the course, while the Learning Supports link offers access to a series of college-wise resource.  The Optional Extras And Extra Effort offers one explanation for why I like the Journal as a basic course responsibility.

Browse carefully on the Assignments Page, paying particular attention to the Journal Instructions and the list of Recommended First Half Journal Entries.  I would emphasize that the Journal, the semester's most important assignment, is something that I expect you to work on regularly throughout the course of the semester and that you will be asked to submit your In-Progress First Half Journal in the third week of the course.  It should be centred upon the common course curriculum (the Reading Assignments, the Listening And Viewing Assignments, and the Optional Extras from the Syllabus Page).  The Journal is meant to be quite an individualized assignment that is shaped to a significant degree by your interests, learning style, and present academic skill level.

2)  Write me your Letter of Introduction.  You do not need to write me more than one letter if you are taking two or more courses with me this semester.  Submit your Letter of Introduction to me through the Brightspace Site.

3)  Complete the HIS 120 Orientation Exercise as outlined through the Syllabus Page and use that exercise as the basis for a short Brightspace Discussion Forum Contribution.

4)  Complete the three different short Week 1 Listening, Viewing, and Reading Assignments.  As is listed on the Syllabus, this will involve watching the "2600 Years Of History In One Object" Ted Talk about the history of the Cyrus Cylinder and reading Marcos Such-Gutierrez, "Sumer: Cradle Of Civilization," National Geographic History Magazine (July/August 2023): 16-27.  You also are encouraged to access the Optional Extras.