Age of Exploration
Required readings and supplies.
The following books are available at the OU bookstore:
Jeffrey Burton Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth
J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance
Carla Rahn Phillips, Six Galleons for the King of Spain
Ivor Noel Hume, Martin’s Hundred
In addition, you will need to have certain supplies on hand for our projects. Key ones you'll need up front include:
corrugated cardboard, preferably brown with as little writing on it as possible
stiff cardboard (pasteboard) of the kind one finds on the backs of legal pads
brown paper shopping bags, preferably without too much printing on them
black and brown thread
twist ties (one sheet should suffice)
white glue
safety pins (three or four)
sewing needles (fairly heavy ones -- five or six)
We will need some other materials as we go along, but I will likely provide you with those. As much as possible, make use of things you have lying around the house. My project ethic is this: recycling starts at home, and the more one can see "garbage" as "raw materials" the better off the world will be.
For the various projects, it will be necessary to do a bit of research, part of it on the Web. At varying points, I would advise you to examine the following web sites.
Jamestown Rediscovery
These are but a few of the sites we will be exploring. I would suggest seeing what other ones you can find -- good and bad -- so that we can develop some means of assessing the usefulness of web resources for teaching this subject.