Crusades Project - Part 3

Almost done! Time to put the bibliography together.

Today, I finished constructing all of my remaining tweets to demonstrate my understanding of the Muslim viewpoint on the Second Crusade and Third Crusade. As I did this, I located several more sources, which I used for these two crusades. These sources are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Crusade

http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/the-second-crusade.htm

http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/crusades/2nd/12.shtml

http://www.the-orb.net/textbooks/crusade/thirdcru.html
http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_crusade3rd.html
http://the-orb.net/textbooks/muhlberger/lionheart.html

Today I made use of the search engine, sweetsearch.com. I really liked it, and preferred it over google.com and bing.com, which I used yesterday. The sources that it provided me with were much more helpful than those provided by google or bing. In this way, sweetsearch proved most helpful.

I only had one real problem with finding information - as I only needed specific information (how the Muslims were affected, etc.), I had to spend a good amount of time weeding out unnecessary information provided by different web sites that I visited. It was most difficult finding specifically what I needed rather than random stuff that was relevant to the topic, but not relevant for my exact purposes.

The only problem that I encountered with my choice of using Twitter for my project was that it was a bit more involved than I had anticipated...I had to create three different email addresses in order to create three separate accounts, and it was a bit inconvenient having to sign out of one account and into another constantly.

My project worked out exactly as I had envisioned, and I am very happy with it. This is because I was able to convey opinions of several different people, but formulate a common base for all of them so that it was organized, flowed well, and made sense over all.

Woo!

Crusades Project - Part 2

Today, I began to get down to business. I located several sources, and was able to begin and complete my work on the First Crusade for my project.

First, I created three Twitter accounts for several Muslim men that will contribute "their" opinions of the crusades...Mohammad Abbas, Ibrahim Jafari, and Abdul Mahdavi.

(This was an extremely irritating process, as I was forced to create three new separate email addresses to accomodate all accounts).

How did I find my information? For today at least, I used the Google search engine.
Where did I find it?...My sources to begin with:
http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/the-first-crusade.htm
http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/bible/crusades.stm
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/first_crusade.htm

I also attempted a use of Bing after Google began to frustrate me, but I wasn't a fan of the pages that I was being provided from it.

Crusades Project, Part 1

And so it begins.

First of all, I hate Blogger for deleting my first (and superior) version of this post. Anyways...
Decisions have been made, and it's time to get going...unfortunately. Yay stress!

For my project, I will be focusing on the following crusades: The First, Second, and Third Crusades.

I have made this decision because I believe that these three crusades will have the most information available to me, as each of them had an actual outcome. For example, the First Crusade ended with the streets of Jerusalem running red with blood. Obviously, I can easily formulate opinions of those who experienced such an event, as it is so violent. Therefore, opinions are obviously going to be strong on the subject and easily inferred. As for the Second and Third Crusades, both ended with a Muslim comeback or another event that again would facilitate strong opinions.

I have also chosen to create a Twitter hashtag, #darncrusades in order to display my understanding.

I have made this decision because I wish to create several accounts representing a few Muslims that would have experienced these crusades (obviously I will be making them up out of my imagination). I will be able to easily display my understanding of the topic because I can literally post opinions right on there per account, and that'll be fairly simple. It will also allow me to prove that I understand the given subject in a diverse light, in that the multiple accounts that I will be creating will allow me to create multiple opinions that may conflict with each other depending upon the personality of the characters which I create.

I have chosen to display my information in this fashion because it will appear as very organized and easily readable, as everything will be right in chronological order, and all tweets will have to be short and concise.

I hope to accomplish my goal of proving my understanding through being able to formulate believable opinions. In addition, I hope to be able to create different opinions for each Twitter account that I create per Muslim character that I create so that I may be able to diversify my project, and create multiple viewpoints.

Well, here we go.

Welcome to Armenia in America!

First off, I'd like to express my utter hatred for Blogger. This is not the first or the second time which I am forced to type this same post, but the THIRD. Being the saint that Blogger is, it preaches to its users that it will randomly save your post as you type to keep it safe. But no. Miraculously, Blogger does not extend this service to me, as it clearly hates me. Not only does Blogger not auto save my drafts, but when I order it to publish my post, it ignores me and signs me out of the website. I HATE YOU BLOGGER. Anyways, for holiday traditions this year, I functioned as an honorary Armenian in order to help my friend work her table based upon Armenian Christmas. Armenian Christianity directly relates to several things we have studied this year. First off, several religions that we have touched upon all developed in the Middle East - conveniently, the Armenian Christian sect developed in this area as well. It directly correlates with our most recent study on Europe in the middle ages and the division of the Christian church based upon differences in the churches in the West and the East - as Armenian Christianity is another sect of Christianity, it represents another division in the church. Lastly, (and quite obviously), this religious sect is immediately related to what we have learned so far in AP World, as due to its Christian base, we have studied its origin in class in that we have learned about its beginnings, the Christian religion in general, and Jesus the prophet. I dislike Blogger - my first two blog posts would have been better.

JeopardyJeopardy

While playing the review games, I am noticing that in terms of the religion category, I am not as strong in the Islam section. Questions on the Indian leader at the time of Islamic invasions (Mahmud) and the word Islam meaning submission are two that I got wrong. In terms of political structure, I need to remember that Charlemagne's officials to bring counts under control were the missi dominici. The bureaucracy of merit in Tang China elected officials based upon examinations...I need to study political structure more.

I found an error! In "that awkward post-classical jeopardy game", under social structure for 200, an error exists in that women were not encouraged to participate in foot binding, but had absolutely no day whatsoever, as foot binding was a form of control. Sorry Heen...

On the "Post-Classical Review" game, an error was found in that the question called for two places that India traded extensively with, when the poor soul to construct the question answered with "the subcontinent and on the ocean to the south" which not only makes literally no sense, but the correct answer is actually China and the Middle East. This was found under economy for 100.

In the same section for 500, the question is wrong because feeding 20 serfs for 2 points is completely unlike feeding literal people to keep them alive. At the same time, having this information will not help me in succeeding on e test. Since this is illegitimate and rules for a game rather than real life, it is wrong.

Sweeeeeeeeet emooootiooooooon!

4. Monasteries that kept to the Rule could be useful to society in the fact that many aided public affairs by acting as orphanages, schools, etc. Additionally, all how participated in the Rule (which was many people, because they were all scaredy cats) would be kept in line and not threatening the public through wrongdoing and crime, as it would be against their religion. Seeing as so many people followed this lifestyle, it probably helped Europe out with their crime rate. Their policy of helping the poor obviously was of great assistance to society, as many people were being aided by these institutions.

5. Of the social structure of the time period, one may guess from the copious amounts of rules that surrounded a monastic lifestyle that social structure was probably very set and carried many requirements of the inhabitants - in this respect I mean that one may wonder that perhaps for certain levels of society, many things were expected of the people who composed them. In terms of the economic structure, one may guess that it was struggling but still pulling up from the depths of the fall of the Roman Empire. This may be drawn from the fact that monks were to give to the poor. If so many people were monks at the time, Europe must have been ridden with the poor. From this, we may guess that perhaps the economy at the time was still pulling itself back up.

Burning down the house...

To be honest, I don't really like these poems. I'm not a huge poetry fan, because it bores me and I don't really understand what they mean. Because of this, I feel unintelligent and I feel as though I am being smited by an inanimate object. Therefore, I don't really like these poems. However, I do think that they reflect Indian society a little bit through their mentioning of the caste system and religious views - such as, according to one poem, their God being everything around them. Caste differences are reflected in the poems by the wording chosen to describe a girl of a lower caste in one of the poems.