I haven't written much over the past week or so. Things in the class have been going well. Nearly all of the Google Drive issues have been solved, although some continue to linger. The next time I teach this class I'm going to take more control over the creation of the shared documents. I think that will help.
I'm going to be honest here. I have always wished I had a better grasp of Iberian history. I see this class as a great opportunity to do better. I'm a very visual learner, and I have always wanted a visual timeline of Iberian history -- perhaps cross-referenced with other important historical moments. I'm sure I could find something else out there, but I learn a lot when I make my own aids. So I've been using OmniGraffle to make a chronology of Iberian history. I actually started making something like this last year when I taught SPAN 441 at BYU, but this semester it is going to be much bigger and better.
First I made a timeline of Iberian history beginning with the first appearance of Homo Heidelbergensis around 780,000 years ago. I wanted to give myself and my students an idea of the length of time different groups were in the Peninsula. I came up with the following diagram:
Iberian Pre-History
You can see that this doesn't leave me much room to dig into the details of recorded history, so I have started another timeline. The bottom is all mucked up the work that I did in that 441 class, but it will all come together soon. I am designing this on a grid in which each big square represents 10 years. I like it because it gives me enough granularity to see what is going on at different times. I don't know how big OmniGraffle will let me make this. I may have to divide it into different pieces.
Here is what I've got so far:
Iberian History
I like taking a few minutes at the beginning of class and showing my students new things that I've added to the timeline. They seem to like it as well.
I've added things up to when the Visigoths are going to enter the Peninsula. What do you think? Are there major events that I've missed so far?
I will be keeping updated versions of these timelines as PDFs on the class homepage here if you are interested in seeing how they progress.