Texas History Internet Class

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Texas History Internet Class

• Orientation for Fall 2008
• Stan Siler, Adjunct Professor
• Palo Alto College

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• This web site meets the course requirements in
  Texas History at Palo Alto College. Students will
  have the opportunity to do the assignments on the
  Internet and learn how to use computer
  applications such as Microsoft Word, Power
  Point, Excel, and Windows Movie Maker.  The
  students who have chosen this class must be
  self-motivated to keep up with the class
  assignments and dedicated to exploring the use of
  computers in their learning experience. It is
  very important to keep up with the assignments
  and due dates.

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Texas History Book

• Textbook for Texas History
• Texas, The Lone Star State, Ninth Edition.
  Rupert N. Richardson, Adrian Anderson, Cary D.
  Wintz, Ernest Wallace.

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Accessing the web site

• I want to welcome you to the orientation for this
  class. I hope that the instructions that are
  given to you during this session will get you
  going with the course work.
• Accessing the web site
• You will go into your PALS and look at the class
  page for the link. You should be able to access
  this page by Tuesday, August 26

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Getting Started with the web site

• Read the index page. This page will have all of
  the important information- grading policy, the
  navigation links, etc.
• The most important link is the Course Calendar
  work. This has the links to the assignments and
  the dates that they are due. There is a word
  document that you can print out and stick on your
  refrigerator or computer that tells you when all
  the assignments need to be turned in to me.
• Each set of chapter assignments have power points
  that contain the notes that I use for the normal
  term class. Be sure to look at these. These notes
  help supplement the reading of the book

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Getting Started continued

• The first assignment is the Texas History
  Questionnaire. This provides me important
  information and also serves as a trial run for
  emailing the assignments. You will open this
  assignment from the index page. Please provide
  any and all email addresses that you have, and I
  will try to set up my address book to send to all
  your email addresses.
• You will email this assignment to me at
• stansilerpac_at_aol.com

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Course Calendar and Due Dates
 
This is just an example of what the course
calendar page looks like-
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Assignment Instructions

• Each assignment has an answer sheet to use for
  the questions- multiple choices, matching, or
  true and false, and the essay questions that are
  associated with each chapter. You can copy and
  paste these onto your answer sheet, and then
  complete the essays.
• Each set of chapters you choose 3 of the essays
  or questions to complete. Make sure if it calls
  for citations of work, to do that, either from
  the book (and page number) or other source you
  might use- i.e.- the Internet- you can copy and
  paste the link from the address bar into your
  answer sheet. The due time is 1159 PM of the
  date listed

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Grading the class

• Grading- Each section will have a number of
  assignments to choose from. The assignments will
  add up to 100 points, so if there are 3
  assignments to complete, each will count 25
  point. The beginning set of questions count 25
  points.
• You are required to complete all sections (this
  is 70 percent of your grade) , the Book or Movie
  Assignment will be 6 percent, the Texas
  Legislature Assignment will be 7 percent, the
  Class Assignment (which is the Power Point
  presentation, travel brochure, or book report)
  will count 7 percent, and the final exam will
  count 10 percent.
• Points will be taken off for late work. Five
  points per day will be lost for late assignments.
  If there is truly an exceptional problem, please
  contact me as soon as possible.

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The Projects

• There are two projects to do for the class 1) an
  assignment that covers the Texas legislative
  session that will be due in November and 2)
  another assignment that will be over a Texas
  topic that will be due toward the end of the
  class in December. It can be a Power Point, a
  travel brochure, a book report, or a movie that
  can be made using Windows Movie Maker. The
  instructions for these can be found on the web
  site.

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Important things to remember

• There will be an assignment due each week, and
  the due date is Sunday night at 1200
• Keep up with the assignments- one of the main
  reasons I have seen for low grades is that people
  get behind and cannot get caught up
• Plagiarism can be very costly. Please put
  everything in your own words and give credit to
  your sources. Use standard citation and be sure
  to cite your book and the page numbers when you
  use the book

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Contact Information
                           You can contact me at
my email address  stansilerpac_at_aol.com If there
is an emergency or an assignment you just cannot
figure out, you can contact me at my home phone
number- 210-695-3101 during the hours 8 and 10 at
night. I am also online about 4 nights a week, so
please email me whenever a question or problems
occurs