Provenance Have a look at the activity sheet. There are four quotes. Have a look! Answer only the first two questions. You have just five minutes in your pairs.

1. The iPod will never take off – Sir Alan Sugar in No need for a computer in the home – Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment Corp in "Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within ten years" – Alex Lewyt, president of the Lewyt Corp vacuum company 4. TV won't last because people would, "soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night" – Darryl Zanuck in In 1933, after the first flight of the Boeing 247, a plane that could hold ten people, a proud Boeing engineer reportedly said, "There will never be a bigger plane built." 6. "We stand on the threshold of rocket mail" – US postmaster general Arthur Summerfield in "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys" – Sir William Preece, chief engineer at the Post Office in "X-rays will prove to be a hoax" – Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, in 1883.

Rules of Thumb – Primary 1)People / Groups may embellish their own role / contribution / value / significance. 2)People / Groups may have explicit / implicit swipes at the opposition. 3)Don’t believe the hype! Speeches / Posters / Politicians / Groups can be guilty of over-stating a cause that they believe in. 4)Don’t swallow the content of the source as the gospel truth.

Rules of Thumb – Secondary 1)Hindsight is such a wonderful / convenient thing. Something that is a bad idea now might not have been / appeared so at the time! 2)Beware the historian a.k.a ‘Mrs. Buy-My-Book’ imposing personal bias / over simplifying / glossing over the facts / sexing up the story. Careful: Don’t confuse reliability with usefulness. A secondary source that doesn’t claim to be an eyewitness or first hand account is still useful.

RequirementStrategy Cross-Referencing of sources. Analyse the sources & cross reference to find points of support and challenge for the question. AnalyseDon’t paraphrase sources or tell the story! Analyse the sources in regards to the question asked! ProvenanceThe provenance of the sources must be integrated into your analysis to help you weigh up the evidence. Make a solid and measurable final judgment that the examiner can plot on an ‘opinion continuum.’ Be specific! ‘agree to a large / small extent’ Avoid ‘it agrees to an extent’ or ‘agrees a certain amount’ because this is not measurable! Answer the question asked! Don’t leave the examiner scrambling to correlate your analysis with the question. Use the PEEK / PEEL / PEEKL format if necessary. (K=Keep to question).

Put it into practice … This is the exact exam paper that pupils sat on 22 nd May 2012 for this module. 1)Digest question. Make notes in pairs. 2)Discuss approaches as a group. 3)Write our responses (peer consultation warmly encouraged!)

What process do you go through when presented with a source? What in particular do we want to improve? What strategies can we implement to get there?