Project #4

Ok, so I've decided to do something diferent. My original idea didn't work out so well and I want my project to be more technology savy. After talking to Nadia and hearing her sucess with facebook I have decided to do something on facebook as well. My plan is two make four different users, one for each crusade I am doing then post status updates and have them interact with one another based on their thoughts throughout the crusade. The crusades I will be focusing on are the first, second, third and fourth crusades. After my research I feel that these crusades have the most to offer in my project, even though it was hard to give up the oppurtunity to mock children who forgot they needed a boat. Well its off to facebook from here. I will post the final product on the blog later along with my bibliography.

Project Post #3

When it comes to the collaboration part of the project I worked with Iselle, Bobby, and Nadia. I commented on some of their blog posts with websites I felt were helpful to me, and based on their research I think would be helpful to them too. These websites I found were from sweetsearch and bing. I tried to stay away from google just because I was curious what other sites had to offer. One particular site I found on Bing was an encyclopedia that was structured a lot like wikipedia, however, I felt like this website had a lot more in depth information while still maintaining the easy navigation that wikipedia uses. The website I found on sweetsearch differed a lot from sites that I would usually find on google. This was basically an index of all the crusades with basic information on the homepage. Then you could select which crusade you wanted to find more about, and it would bring up a very detailed and thorough page of what happened. Lastly, I went a bit oldschool for some of my sources. Like I mentioned before in my first blogpost about the project, I went to the Burlington Public Library to check out some books. What I like about these books is that every single one of them is different and offers something extra to my project, which is something that is sometimes overlooked when using websites. Websites can tend to be very similar and uniform in their presentation of topics. Where as the books I picked out have certain images and diagrams that enhance the material and make each source unique.

Project Post #2

So for the structure of the project I'm going to try and spike my creativity a little bit and do something  different. I find I work better visually so I am going to construct a four sided pyramid, one side for each crusade I'm doing. At the top of the pyramid will be the people who I believe "won" the crusade. By won I do not only mean physically beat the other side, but I mean who had psycological or geographical advantages over the other side. Then using my 3D diagram I will make a video explaining why I put everything there aand how this explains the Muslims reactions.

Project Post #1

Today I went to the Burlington Public Library to get a few books on the crusades to learn some more in depth information. I found several books, but the one that interested me the most was an atlas of all the crusades. It had large maps showing every individual movement, the people involved and the general locations affected. I think this will be most helpful in understanding the chronology of the crusades and assist in developing a conclusion on the Muslims opinion of them.

Studying with Jeopardy

After playing the Jeopardy games today I found that I did the best on questions about demography and agriculture but didn't do as well on the questions based on politics. One of the more difficult questions i came across was "This is the term that is used to describe Pope Gregory I assertion that the bishop of Rome is the head of the church." The answer was papal primacy. I think I was confused about this question because of it's specific nature. I learned from this question that I need to refine my studying more to some specific things, but at the same time not to focus on them too much because there is a lot of material to study.

Benedict's rules

4. Monasteries that kept to Benedict's rules could be very useful institutions because they provided so many services to the community, as well as keeping its people peaceful and content. These monasteries also educated many by serving as schools and they cared for the sick. Also they served as places of refuge and as much needed rest stops for the travelers of Western Europe. All of these aspects contributed to a more educated breed of people that had the ability to hold government positions and directly contribute ideas of the Roman Catholic church to society. Also these monasteries served the community by increase agriculture production. The inhabitants of the monasteries were taught to be silent, garden, and meditate all day which was fortunate because they were able to grow their own food. Also they preached not to be gluttonous and to do everything in moderation, meaning that they probably did not eat all of the crops they produced. This ultimately provided a sense of trade to the economy.
5. The rule of this tight nit and highly structured society within the monasteries suggests a sense of disorder in the outside community. The strict and demanding language and tone exhibited in Benedict's rule suggests the need for religious structure in the communities and in politics outside of the monasteries. Also the monasteries seemed to control most of the economy due to their production of agriculture. They also had high literacy rates because they forced the monks to read everyday, containing most of the knowledge of Western Europe within the monastery. This shows the chaos that was going on outside of the monastery walls and the decentralization of Western Europe.

Indian poetry

I liked these poems. They were short, concise and to the points which I thought was easier to interpret. However I do not think they reflected Indian society very well because the lines were so short and simple that the complex aspects of society could not be interpreted as a whole.