Yo yo yo, it’s Jason back again with another wonderful humanities post. That’s right, they just keep comin’. This one’s gonna be about the days of waves crashing against ships, invading lands, and takin’ stuff. No, unfortunately, it’s not the pirates. No no no, it’s not the Vikings either. What’s that, the Age of Exploration? You bet it is!
Also, unfortunately, or fortunately if you don’t like bad memes, I won’t be putting any memes into this post because all of the Age Of Exploration memes I found were nasty Columbus Day memes and I just don’t really want to get into that drama, so let’s carry on.
Alrighty then. Let’s start with talkin a bit about the final goal. Our final project this unit was a big ol’ comic book about an explorer from a certain country that we picked… wait, First, we were put into new groups yet again. Our NEW group consisted of Paisley, Izzy, Celeb, Luciano, and yours truly. Ok, now that that’s out of the way, I can move on. So, we picked countries by using a big ol’ digital wheel, and we picked Spain, mostly based on the fact that their names were the most interesting. We then picked our explorers and I picked a certain Mr. Juan Ponce de León. Fun Fact: Juan Picne de León was one of the first people to start searching for the legendary Fountain of Youth. Bet you didn’t know that.
As I mentioned before, we had to create comics from the point of view of a crew member on a certain explorer’s voyage. We had to also make a presentation while acting as that crew member and attempt to persuade the King and Queen to allow us to embark on our own voyages. Pretty “radical” if I do say so myself.
Comic Research
As we learned about explorers and trading and all that stuff, we also had a side project on comics, which to me, was an absolute godsend. Unfortunately, we had to make a very extensive chart on said comics. Meh. You win some, you lose some I guess. We had 4 main groups of comics we had to cover. Tintin, Superhero, Anti-Hero, And New Age. Upside: I got full bragging rights to my non PLP friends as I got to read comics in class while they were stuck doing textbook work. Downside: As I was reading comics and listening to music, my parents did not believe that that was considered as homework. They thought that I was just reading comics because I felt like it and that I was using Humanities as an excuse.
Motivation
The first thing we looked at after the unit overview was why the explorers even bothered to explore. We looked at what a Beringia was (land bridge) and some of the main reasons nations, such as Europe, explored. The 3 main reasons we looked at were because they wanted to insert themselves into the trade routes, because they wanted new metals to use as currency, or to spread the teachings of their religions. (Mostly Christianity.)
Challenges and Technology
The next things we looked at were what challenges they faced and the technology they used. We looked at the types of ships and equipment used on the voyages, and we also looked at how life in the Renaissance impacted their explorations. For more on the Renaissance, check out my post on that:
Other stuff
After that, we looked at a variety of things, as the creative title suggests. We checked out who Jacques Cartier was and his expeditions to “discover” Canada. We also looked at the Middle passages and slavery. For that, we looked at 5 different documents about slavery and the middle passages from 5 different points of view. We then made a chart of the differences between the documents. After these studies, came the final project. Yep. The presentation.
The Climax
Oh, yes. The presentation. Now, as always, I procrastinated as much as I possibly could before the presentation. So, in the last few nights leading up to the presentation, I really had to rush to get it all together. In those nights, I had enough energy drinks to make myself vomit, and I listened to enough Iron Maiden to make my ears bleed. Finally, I finished the last slide of my keynote, I created the last block of my comic, and I wrote the last line of my script. Then came the presentation.
I think the quote that best describes the presentation comes from the immortal Homer Simpson.
I panicked. Yep. I absolutely choked. It was not good. I sped up my talking a lot and I made little to no eye contact to the crowd. Definitely not my best. Anyways, I managed to get it done with a decent mark and it was finally over. If I were to somehow redo it, I would not have procrastinated as much. I think that, as always, laziness was my downfall. Also, here’s a copy of my comic. You can check that out right here.
THE AMAZING, ASTOUNDING, ANTHONY DE CAPO-1felpwh
Well, I guess that’s it. If you’ve made it this far, give yourself a big pat on the back. I probably couldn’t have made it through my own post. I apologize if it’s kinda boring. I won’t take any offence if you think it is. Anyways…. bye.