What does all this look like? It is easiest to demonstrate with a visit. Bookmark or otherwise note the page you are currently on, then follow the links below.

Syllabus
The Syllabus contains a description of the Trails exercise. There are not a lot of rules. Mainly the intent is to let the students know this is not a required exercise but is there in case they run out of things to say in discussion.

Ancient Trails
This is the first set of Trails. As you can see, it's just a plain list. A bit of imagination with the titling here helps set the tone that this is a place to have some fun.

It's worth taking a quick look at the
Medieval Trails
and the
Early Modern Trails
just for comparison.

Fasces
The first example concerns the fasces. This is something almost certainly unknown to the student and certainly is something that would be considered of minor importance. I chose pictures that would show what the thing was, but the pictures by themselves are a bit mysterious.

Here I asked the obvious question: what does fasces mean? A search on that term would like turn up little more than a dictionary definition, which is not where I want the students to stop. So, I threw in a few hooks: lictor, tribune, and Mussolini. That should be sufficient to raise some curiousity, if nothing else.

The students who undertook this found the connections between these quickly enough, but if they had not, this too could be a teaching opportunity. Ask the student to search on "fasces and lictor" or "fasces and tribune". This produces all sorts of interesting hits.

And finally, I found a picture (by using the Images tab on a Google search) that was someone's drawing of what the fasces might look like. This gave me the opportunity to ask the students to judge whether that representation was historically accurate or not.

Palazzo Vecchio
This Trail uses an approach similar to fasces, though I tell them right up front that the words themselves aren't of primary interest.

One aspect of this Trail raises a worthwhile search engine consideration. "palazzo vecchio" is Italian, which means lots of the hits are going to be on pages in Italian. So, learn to use the English filter.

Hanging Tree
Third, this grim bit of business. This one played out just as I wanted it to. The first person to blaze the Trail said she expected to find this was a scene of soldiers doing something horrible. She was surprised to find it was rather otherwise. That is exactly the experience of discovery for which I was hoping when I created these exercises.