What are we doing here?

This blog will be the home of the Ottoman History By Students For Students Podcast. As I was preparing a class on the Ottoman Empire I was somewhat surprised to find that there were no English language podcasts on the historical journey of the Ottoman Empire and it's dominance of most of the Mediterranean Sea for almost half a millennia. This will be our humble effort to fix that problem.

How will this work?

Each time I teach a section of this class I will have students make a 5-10 minute podcast on an important topic they found interesting from what they learned in the class. They start by spending a few hours over a 2-week period doing research on the topic they have chosen.They follow up by writing a 550-1000 word essay on their topic and having the rough draft checked and edited by me, the teacher. They then spend the last week recording their podcast and having it edited and formatted for introduction into the blog.

This provides a project the students an opportunity to focus more deeply on a topic we studied in class. It will also give future students something to listen to along with other history podcasts to help them understand this important part of the history of the Mediterranean region.