View of Lehigh Valley farmland from Blue Mountain, looking south towards South Mountain way in the distance.
Slatington is beyond the left edge of this picture.  Photo credit robotbrainz.

Here's the assignment: “Write a brief history of the world, 1995-present, from your own perspective.”

Your history should be the equivalent of a paper that is at least ten pages, double-spaced, one-inch margins, font size 10-13. Your history must be published in some format on the web. (Check out the instructions for the website creation option. Those might give you some ideas.) In other words, I do not accept a Word or PDF document for this assignment.

Your history should be your view of what has happened in the world since 1995, and it will include your analysis and interpretation of what is important about what happened in that period of time. I am willing to adjust this time boundary if you wish to do a different time period, but it must be a time that you lived through, for example the 1970s or 1980s or 2000s.  Please email me for approval first.

In your history, I expect that you will include your specific memories of important events as they happened, for example, the Bush-Gore presidential election of 2000, or the Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl triumph.  I will also point out writing problems for you to fix, and I expect them to be corrected.  I will not accept last-minute submissions.

• I do need to see a draft before final submission.
  
• You should use web-based sources, including newspapers, throughout your history. The online databases available through the college's library web page will give you a lot of possible sources that you can check.
• You should include images, and each image must appear with a URL source citation.
• You should reference specific details within your paper. For example, if you use statistics on the 2000 US presidential election, then you should cite where you found that information. So, your paper will have to include some references. The references should appear in parenthetical form, i.e., the URL or other citation should appear in parenthesis in the paper.
• I do not expect to see rants or colloquial language in your history.  Please consult Charlie's History Writing Center for specific information on what I require as proper writing in the course.  While I still ask you to use the past tense as much as possible with this assignment, I will allow the use of "I" in your narrative.
• Your paper should not be simply a timeline; it should have a narrative and read like a history.
• Finally, this is not a course centered on US history.  So, while much of your personal world history will reflect memories of events that occurred in the US, you should broaden your perspective to a world view as much as possible.
  

You can view some great examples of this assignment.