Links

Hashtag: https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%23APworldSillyCrusades
My profile: https://twitter.com/#!/Quran_4evah
Heena's profile: https://twitter.com/#!/Allah_luvs_me

Wrapping it up

I really liked the outcome of this project, because I think our idea of having the two Muslims talk back and forth was really unique. Some of the tweets sounded a little forced, and I think some were awkward simply because people don't casually tweet what year it is. But besides that, this was a ton of fun! Heena and I both followed some other Islam-related twitters, Heena gained a random follow (who I'm sure was confused), and I accidentally followed a ton of Muslim twitters on my personal account the first time around. We got to poke fun at each other and think outside the box with our research, which I really enjoyed. I would love to do something like this again the future. Muhammad the Quran lover will always have a place in my heart.

Bibliographies are boring

But unfortunately, they're necessary. Here's mine:


 "Crusades." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 12 Jan. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades>.

 Rickard, J. (24 March 2001), Sixth Crusade, 1228-1229, http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_crusade6th.html

 "Sixth Crusade." Packrat Productions. Web. 12 Jan. 2012. <http://www.packrat-pro.com/crusades/crusade6.htm>.

 Bentley, Jerry H., and Herbert F. Ziegler. Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past: Volume A: From the Beginning to 1000. Boston: McGraw Hill, C2011., 2006. Print.

Bing continues to disappoint me

I rarely use Bing, because it tends to lead me around in circles and it likes to autocorrect everything I type in. Which explains why I was having difficulty finding articles on the "piece crusades". Hmm. Well, Bing was decent for this project, but the best page it could provide me with was Wikipedia. Not everything seemed reliable, and often the articles would simply mention "peace" or "Crusade" or "Is Islam a friendly religion?" and not actually be talking about the crusades. Google was slightly better, but I was surprised by the lack of quality articles I found using it. I love Google. But apparently it's not the best for history projects. Yahoo, shockingly to me anyways, provided some nice articles that I used during my research. There wasn't a lot of irrelevant stuff in the middle, which is nice and it saves time. Sweetsearch was the best, because it linked to lots of informative articles and didn't give me too much random stuff to sift through.

The only other reference we used was the textbook, which I put in the bibliography.

Tweet War

So Heena and I did make a series of tweets, which are almost completed now. Our hashtag is #APworldSillyCrusades , and looking back, it may have been wise to shorten it. Anyways. It goes back and forth between Heena's account, @Allah_Luvs_me, and mine - @Quran_4evah. Heena / Fatima is tweeting back and forth with me / Muhammad about the crusades, and what's going on, and how we see it happening. We included a picture of an accurate portrayal of how Muslims pray, and some of the text was written in Arabic (with English translations, of course). Now what's mostly left to do is organize our sources, make a bibliography, and link everything. It's the final stretch!

It Begins

Despite the fact that I had to cancel all my social plans due to rigorous Chemistry studying, Heena and I did start planning on what we're doing for the project. We're most likely going with the 1st crusade, the 4th crusade, and the peace crusade. Of course, we'll have an honorable mention of the children's crusade, our favorite. We're going to do a series of tweets, possibly including some pictures of ourselves (can you guess who will be playing the Muslim girl?). I've started some of the research, but not deep enough to post anything about search engines yet.

Silk Road Project Review

1. One thing that I definitely think went well was working in partners. It was easier to divide the work up and pool our ideas together. Also, for the most part, the paper seems to be going well (we haven't finished it yet, but it seems to be ok). And finally, giving us class time really helped. It was a good opportunity to ask questions and get a good amount done.

2. One thing that was a little tough was the research. There wasn't a lot of thorough information on each item, and I personally don't like doing a lot of guesswork. Getting our map to be proportional to the original probably took us the longest amount of time, due to our lack of math and line-drawing skills, I think. Also, it was a little tough to track the Bubonic plague, since most of the information was regarding the outbreak in Europe.

3. Drawing was hard for me, but I'm sure most of the groups didn't have an issue with that. The actual work itself wasn't too bad, but trying to finish it in a timely manner could be challenging. Also, some of the research was hard to do, because it was what I could find vs. what was most likely accurate.

4. I liked working with a partner. It's hard in a group sometimes to split up the work, and then sometimes people don't agree on things, and working on the project at the same time is nearly impossible. But with a partner we can compare ideas, switch off based on whose handwriting is better and who can draw a straight line, and split the work pretty evenly. Also, it's always better to be working with a friend than locked in your room by yourself. Always.

5. If we did it again, I'd probably suggest we redo how the maps would be proportional. I also might spend more hardcore researching time for the products we picked. Though this is beyond my control, it would be great if we avoided power outages and blizzards while working on something like this.