Purposes: To enlarge students' research capabilities; to encourage thinking from the perspective of another person.
Procedure:
Use email to assign each student a different historical personage. Students are given three weeks to research the person and write a series of journal entries as if they were the character. They should give clues as to their identity, describing events and encounters with other persons, but avoid saying things like, "I invented the light bulb yesterday." The journal entries need to be posted on a discussion board forum at the end of the three-week period. Each student will read each journal and submit their guesses via email to the instructor as to the identity of the historical person portrayed in each journal. Give points for the student writing the best journal and for the student identifying the most people.
After the exercise is over, have students discuss what new aspects of the historical characters' lives they learned from research and from reading the journals.
Examples:
Prominent historical person, anonymous person (e.g., medieval monk), spouse or child of prominent character, contemporary actor playing the role of a prominent character, observer of historical character (e.g., King David's scribe).