2.2 Introduction to Perusall (in class) - optional

Started in class (and hopefully finished) September 15th

Requirements

In order for you to complete this exercise, you will need to have:

successfully logged into the class Teams
signed up for a Perusall account and accessed the class Perusall site
have access to a google account and be logged in

What you need to do

write a minimum of five annotations on Danielle Kinsey's "Three Points About History, Especially for Non-Historians." Canadian Journal of History 54, no. 1 (2019): 1-20.
create a file (Word/GoogleDoc) which turns your annotations into a reflection on the reading (i.e. write a literature note) (template here)
upload or link this file in your folder inside the Student Work folder on Teams

Overview

Sign into your Perusall account and navigate to the first assignment, reading Danielle Kinsey's "Three Points About History, Especially for Non-Historians." Canadian Journal of History 54, no. 1 (2019): 1-20.
Carefully read the article and make a minimum of five annotations. Annotations (or textual comments) are meant to be quick thoughts you have in response to ideas in the text. Don't overthink it. For ideas on what kinds of comments to make, consult the section on readings. Complete this portion by the beginning of class on September 15th.
In class on the 15th, we will look together at people's existing annotations and show how we can use notes as a group to learn more about the readings.
During class, you will need to take your annotations on Kinsey's reading and turn it into a literature note and upload it to the Student Work folder on Teams. A template for a literature note can be copied from this one. A literature note is defined as follows:

Make literature notes. Whenever you read something, make notes about the content. Write down what you don’t want to forget or think you might use in your own thinking or writing. Keep it very short, be extremely selective, and use your own words. Be extra selective with quotes – don’t copy them to skip the step of really understanding what they mean. Keep these notes together with the bibliographic details in one place – your reference system.

Detailed Steps

Sign into Perusall. These first steps are already written down here, but I'll reproduce for ease.

A. Navigate to https://app.perusall.com/

B. Register for an account ("Get Started") or login to your existing account by clicking on the correct button on the top right of your browser window.

C. To register, you will need to fill in the following information. You can use any email you wish, but please use a name that will allow me to figure out who you are. Your names and emails will not be visible to others outside the class.

D. Once you have logged in, the top of your screen will have a few large buttons to navigate. Click on the "Enroll in Course" button at the top of the page.

E. Enter the code: SAURETTE-YY72T to join the class Perusall group.

F. If you are using Perusall for the first time, the software will take you through a short tour to show its functionality. I encourage you to spend a few minutes doing this thoughtfully. If you every want a refresher, you can take the "tour" again, or read one of the many tutorials online, such as this one.

G. Click on the "Get Started" tab to see some suggestions about how to read with Perusall.

Under the library tab you will find all the texts I have compiled for the course (most are not assigned and act as a repository for potential reference). Peruse them on your own time and according to your interests.
Under the assignment tab you will see what readings have been assigned. They are organized chronologically.

Making Annotations on an assignment

Click on the assignment, "Kinsey - Three Points About History, Especially for Non-Historians." This should be the first listed assignment, since it is due first. Click "open" and start annotating by highlighting text. You have the option to also annotate images (such as maps, for instance). In the annotation box, you can write texts, reply to fellow students, post images or links etc. In the image below, I have made a few annotations on the text highlighted in blue. My annotations are meant to give you suggestions about what to think about or react to and sometimes I ask readers direct questions.

The text you are reading is on the left, and annotations (comments/ notes) are on the right.

Once you choose annotate, you can type as much as you wish and add a tag to help categorize your annotation (this is an important step!) by adding a #hashtag. Hashtags allow you to identify important concepts and (in the future) you can use them to track down references quickly.

Writing up a literature note.

Ideally, by Friday's class, you have already read Kinsey's article and made a minimum of five annotations. If not (bAd!), you can do it in Friday's class when we speak about Perusall.

After you have made 5 annotations, open up a new window in your browser to create a new note using google docs. Click on this link to open up the google doc template. Do not edit this doc directly, but instead click on "Make a copy" and give it a title, something like, "YOUR NAME - Kinsey - 2019".

The doc will look somewhat like the image below, asking you to fill in various information (in particular a citation for the article) and provide a summary/ assessment of the article. This all needs to be in your own words and you should delete instructions in the doc once you no longer need them (and definitely before you submit the doc to me!).

If there are any particularly important quotations you wish to take from the article, they need to be introduced by your own words, and then followed by your own words to explain the significance of the quotation. This is the point of annotating the text. You react to the original article in real time and then in a literature note, you organize them to give more sense to them.

Once you are done filling out the template, share your document with the class. This is easist of you click on the share button on the top right of the google doc window and then make sure that you change the "general access" to "Anyone with the link" can view it (not edit!). The click on the "Copy link" button and copy the URL for others.

Take the link and add it to Teams. If you haven't created a folder for yourself in Student Work (which is unlikely), navigate to the General channel, click on the "Files" toptab, then click on "Student Work" folder to open it, and then within that, create your self-named folder by clicking on the purple "New" button.

Once you are inside your personalized folder, click on the "New" button again, but this time scroll down to the option "Link". It will open a "Create link to" window. Copy the google URL into the textbook and then modify the default file name it gives you to "Your Name - Kinsey 2019 - Lit Note" and click "create".