HISTORY WESTERN CIV - ACT I - Foothill College, Continuous Quarters
Dr. KF
Professor, History/Political Science

  2007 - 2008

WELCOME TO THE FASCINATING STUDY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

WESTERN CIVILIZATION:  ACT I
From Prehistory to the Fall of Rome and Charlemagne

Fulfills UC/CSU Humanities/Social Science General Education Requirement
Fulfills Foothill Humanities or Social Science General Education Requirement
Fully Articulated and Transferrable

Your registration is NOT complete - YET ! !  TO COMPLETE:  IMMEDIATELY return the COURSE IMPLEMENTATION FORM ON THIS PAGE.  Just scroll down or click here  
Copy the Form off on your email and send it quickly to professor's email <kf02894@mercury.fhda.edu>
You will then receive the critical PRIVATE CORE SITE which contains your: Syllabus Extension, Schedule, Assignments, Exams, Help.  It means you will be up and ready, and early enough to get your textbook used on line!

What is this course's content? The introduction to the WEB BOOK, The Ancient World (click here), on which this course is built gives the broader view.

THE ANCIENT WORLD: Primary Web Book for Western Civ - Act I
WESTERN CIVILIZATION: Primary Web Book for History 4C
Medieval, Renaissance, Reformation:  Primary Web Book for History 4B

created for Netscape

  Send this form and your email to professor IMMEDIATELY.  DON'T WAIT until class begins OR YOU MAY BE DROPPED.

COURSE IMPLEMENTATION FORM
COPY THIS FORM ONTO YOUR EMAIL or Word (and then copy it to Email), FILL IT IN, AND EMAIL  IT!  PLEASE ! - USE THE FOLLOWING HEADING: HISTORY 4A ONLINE INFOSHEET - FALL 2007

Have you been to the Foothill Global Access Page, then Course Page - and looked at it?:  

Have you taken a look at the Web Book? <http://www.omnibusol.com/ancient.html> :

DO YOU HAVE YOUR TEXTBOOK?:

___________________________________________________________________
(The following information is vital if I am to intercede in your behalf when problems occur.)

Email Address:

Where will you be accessing the computer?

College You Are Currently Attending?:

Occupation:

Major:

Have you taken other Online Courses? If yes, where and what

Have you taken any History courses?

Why are you taking this Online Course? (Brief)

City, State, Country in which you were born:

The 3 favorite things you enjoy doing:

Tell us in a short paragraph "a little about yourself"

                YOUR REQUIRED TEXTBOOK

Click here to Book Page:   You will also be able to get your "Other Book" here also - easily!
YOU NEED THE TEXTBOOK WHEN THE CLASS BEGINS  - JUST LIKE IN A REGULAR COURSE.

PRIVATE CORE PAGE
Enrolled Students Have Access to the Act I Private Core PAGE - the URL which they receive after returning the Information Form Right Away.

COURSE COMPONENTS
 A. Basic Text: Required Reading - Spielvogel, Jackson: Western Civilization - Vol.  A to 1500. Any edition, year  HERE
B. The "Other Book": One Additional Reading Project - and Written Reaction:   Library, Bookstores
C. 3 Essay Exams/Mini-Papers: Written as mini-papers, "Take Home," 1 week to complete
#1: After Ancient Civilizations and Egypt
#2: After Greece
#3: After "Fall" of Rome.  
D.  Several  hours a week working online through the Web Book - the substitute for classroom lecturing.

HOW TO SUCCEED

• Read the textbook quickly as a novel, and use it as a reference source.
• Travel in a focused manner at least 5 hours to at least 20 sites on THE ANCIENT WORLD each week.  Work on the exams, THINK.
• Pick your "Other Book" in a timely fashion, read it, and do the two-page analysis.
• Do the 3 exams in a timely and analytical manner - as mini-papers.
• Let professor  or the TA  know if you are having difficulties in your life that preclude your participating for a period of time.  We will try to help. DON'T JUST GIVE UP.

College rules for cheating and plagiarism are in effect.
If a student plagiarizes or does not do his/her own work, I immediately give student an F on the exam, an F in the course and send student's name forward with supporting material to be placed in his/her student file.  I also sometimes ask that the Dean of Students meet with student to determine if further action is necessary.
DO NOT PLAGIARIZE.  What is Plagiarism?  Check here at this Web Site

A CIVIL SOCIETY: This class will be conducted as a civil society. I expect students and myself to treat each other with respect and dignity in class and/or online.

Special EMAIL and Web Hints

Email can be very frustrating. Get familiar with yours. Here are some requirements for this course:

• Clear your cache regularly - at least every 3-4 days.
• Spam Regulator and/or Firewall - be sure to check it and set it low enough so it does not turn down 4A emails.
• Be sure to be absolutely accurate with the Email addresses to which you are sending. Be case-sensitive. Watch numbers.
• Do not send attachments - so many different systems and viruses. Copy and paste instead. Type material into your word processor, copy it, pull up your Email, and paste it. If what you are sending is too long, do it in parts.
• Do not use the Email addresses for this class to send material that is self-serving or Junk Mail. Do not send broadsides to the class. If you are upset about something, do it one-on-one. I will withdraw any student who violates this requirement.
• Remember that the Email system is not confidential. If you want to communicate privately with me, send me and me alone an Email. If you feel you are being harrassed or bothered by another student, let me  or the Online TA know.

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT ONLINE COURSES?  MOST STUDENTS:

• Possess more information and ideas. After all, they are exposed to such a variety and depth of information/challenges.
• Get more accessible assistance from the Professor and TAs than in a regular course. Assistance not time-dependent (student has course at the same time as Professor's office hour), or place dependent (student needs to get home to children).
• Become self-reliant in a hurry and much more of an independent "scholar."
• Learn to look for and search for answers and challenges.
• Are more interested - and seem to find the subject "fun." No single professor could ever duplicate the Web graphics, photos, maps.
• Have much more dedicated time to spend on learning. Much classroom time in a regular class is wasted - getting to class and parking.

ADDENDUM! As several of you know,  I have spent a part of almost every year in the past 35 in Eastern Europe - Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, East Germany, USSR - as well as all the countries of Western Europe, including Greece and "Rome."

 Fall 97 - Just before class began,  I had just returned from Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia - with involvement in a wide variety of projects, including serving as an unofficial election observer in Sarayevo.

 August 97 -  In Slovenia working with computer specialists and professors, and then in Croatia sitting in, going through the burned out villages across the line from Bosnia - and shaking in frustration and anger in the desecrated and ruined WWII Croatian concentration camp and museum in Jasenovic. 

Christmas 97 - Marching in the streets of Belgrade in the demonstrations against Milosevic; by invitation, speaking in the Medical School auditorium to the student and professor leaders of the demonstrations before they went to the streets the day Milosevic brought in Swat teams and buses of 30,000 miners to stop them. and

 January 98 - In Romania working with  country leaders and doctors on the Cancer Project I started four years ago.   

May 98 -  Spent time examining the excavations on the Greek islands and Ephesus, etc.  I thought I should know how much of this  history of ours began.  More important, I spent time in Turkey going through the historically critical Dardanelles, working in Istanbul, and then crisscrossing the Bosphorus by boat for days, imaging where the French fleet sat before it sailed into the Black Sea, imagining the diplomatic conferences trying to decide what to do with this vital area which determined so much of late 19th Century and early 20th Century history, wars, conferences - and most important, who got what country in Eastern Europe, what boundaries would be changed, et.al. 

September 98 - In Bucharest, Romania, and in other parts of Romania, meeting with folks, analysts, academicians, and contacts. Privatization and the economy were on my mind as well as how Romania is fairing with its major multicultural, orphans, unemployment challenges.  Then I flew to Bosnia and Sarajevo.  The elections there were vital and I traveled to Pale and Bosnian Serb  territory, met with professors and scientists, and again, learned a great deal.   Met range of folks in Romania, Bosnia, Sarajevo, Austria, etc. Ministers of Foreign Affairs, students, University Rectors, UN Election Commissioners, relief workers, doctors, et. al. 

 April 99 - Catalyzed a trip to Paris to restudy the effects of Hitler's occupation of France and his Final Solutions of  the Jews and Gypsies in Paris.  Helped catalogue the sites and places in Paris, building by building, which held the Nazi elite, the interrogation and torture sites, the embassies, the temporary holding pens for shipment to the concentration camps.  Met with officials who were working on upgrading the French history of that time.
July 99 -  In Britain, Scotland, Wales to review the history and developments of the Middle Period of Western Civilization from about 1000 to 1900 AD.  I focused on Britain and particularly Scotland and roamed through the "old" bastions and museums of Scotland, particularly on the West Coast and the Islands.  Spent time again trying to understand the ages-old cultures of those places.  

August and September 99 -  Back in Sarajevo, Romania, Croatia, Belgrade. In August and September of 99, I spent 3 weeks in Belgrade and then in Kosovo. Because of sanctions, it was a long trip by bus from Budapest to Belgrade.  The bombing had just recently ended.  I met with all the Serbian opposition leaders and or their staffs, with the leading dissidents from the past, with the directors of the major Milosevic and opposition radio and television stations, students, professors, "ordinary people," friends.  I then took the long drive through Serbia to the "border" between Kosovo and Serbia, past the Serbian and KFOR tanks to hitch a ride in a waiting car through all the bombed out villages to Pristina.  There I met with just about "everyone."  And set up several projects.

August, September,  2000 -    Just returned from Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro
Met with the major Kosovo, UN, KFOR leaders; with leading journalists, with the head of the University and Deans and faculty and students, with survivors of massacres, with the leading businessmen; with Albanian friends and leaders; and with just plain folks.  I particularly enjoyed talking at length with the President of Kosovo, the very courageous Dr. Rugova.  He became a friend.  What a wonderful man and mentor.
August, September, 2001 - Working with conciliation/negotiation groups and political leaders in Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Serbia, Slovenia. 
Spring,  2002 - Foothill Professor Campus Abroad - Florence, Italy.  And weekends in Kosovo, Macedonia, Bosnia, Serbia.
Summer 2002 - Serbia
Spring 2003 - To Serbia for Memorial to Assassinated Prime Minister
December 2003 - In the Caucusus, in the Republic of Georgia during their revolution.
September 2004 - In the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland researching "The Troubles."
May 2005 - During sabbatical - for 3 weeks in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, working with dissidents, leaders, "revolutions."
June 2006 - During sabbatical - for 2 weeks driving through Montenegro, all of Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Republika Serbska, Sarajevo, Dubrovnik - to see by car for first time since the wars how these nations have recovered.

2007 - Paris, working on the Paris Peace Conference material, Nazi occupation update.

 ALL COPYRIGHT LAWS APPLY SINCE 1994
2007-8 version