- Jun 2017
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www.historians.org www.historians.org
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Admittedly, momentum requires a certain tunnel vision. This is one of the dirtiest of the dirty little secrets about writing. Everything about history and life itself is potentially infinite (except one’s life span, unfortunately). There is always another document that could have been consulted, just as there is always another fact about a friend or partner that if you knew would make you understand her or him better. But life is short and if you want to write more than a dissertation or one book or two books and so on, you have to limit yourself to what can be done in a certain time frame. You cannot accumulate pages if you constantly second guess yourself. You have to second guess yourself just enough to make constant revision productive and not debilitating. You have to believe that clarity is going to come, not all at once, and certainly not before you write, but eventually, if you work at it hard enough, it will come. Thought does emerge f
I suffer f rom this problem. I want an epiphany to come to me before I begin. I also research and research looking for just that one document that will have the magic combination of what I need. I second guess myself too much. I also am very disorganized with taking notes
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And research finds that kids these days consistently prefer their textbooks in print rather than pixels.
I don't know how true this is. One element not mentioned here is convience. For the first time, I did not assign individual textbooks this past year, but instead I had a class set of books, and I posted the book to my website. I did this because none of my students in years past wanted to carry their "heavy" book back and forth from home to school. So out of convienece, a large majority of my students did all of their reading online in regards to my text book. I had a handfull request a copy to keep at home, but most of them "read" online.
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When reading on screen, they thought they absorbed information readily, but tests showed otherwise.
Student: "I can't focus with a text book, it is easier if I read it on my phone, or computer" Me: "You will get distracted if you read it on your phone or computer" Student: " you just dont understand, that is how we learn" Me: "ok, go ahead, but your being quized over this" student: (trys reading on phone or computer, doesnt focus, plays games, texts) student: "I got a 40 on the quiz?? Thats not fair, you cant quiz us on just the reading, I don't understand it" me: (facepalm)
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