Second Blog

It’s hard to believe, but the term (at least as far as the actual teaching is concerned) is already over.

Work on the Medieval Village has made excellent progress, and I’d like to thank all participants for their input and their great ideas!

Let me take this opportunity to invite anyone who’s interested to experience the results first-hand to come along for the “village-warming party” on Friday, February 1st between 11:15 and 12:45 CET.

Here’s the location.

First I was a-thinking, why aren’t there any biests here, and where are all the folks gone? Then I stopped short as I saw the ship. Vikings, here? I listened for sounds of a fight, but I couldn’t hear a thing. That’s strange, even stranger than all those plates with pictures and writings on them that were standing about.

But the big empty stone house with the ghastly half-roof was the weirdest thing of all. I didn’t go inside any of those houses, of course, the place was far too spooky for my liking.

Near the shore, next to an eery flat cow… there hung a Crucifix in the air. That did not soothe my nerves at all, although maybe it should have.

I’ve heard enough tales back at home to know when it’s healthier to leave a place, so I fled.

Fiona/Coin

I was thinking about items and topics referring to the aspect of the daily medieval life. I figured it is helpful to talk about economy. So I bought sheep and some other animals that were týpical for the English economy of the 14 century. I would like to give visitors the possibilty to get information about the specific situation in England. In contrast to the continental Europe, England mainly invested in sheep and so gained the status of one of the greatest wool exporting States. The dicision to settle sheep on the Island was mainly influenced by the “black Death. As someone else in the course is telling sth. about it in detail I figured the topics would fit together.

Furthermore I would like to post something concerning religion, but I do not have an specific idea so far..

Today, things got hot during the seminar, what with flaming arrows zooming through the air… Fortunately, the only victim was the wooden horse.

I’ve bought a helmet to give an authentic look to the tournament tent. Hopefully more pieces of armour will follow. But still it’s a start.

In the tent we will present the genre of the romance and the concept of the knights. We will connect our exposition to that of the “weapon and wars” group.

Unfortunately, my imagination is rather limited so I found it quite hard to think of a way to present my topics and, consequently, of an object that I could use for this presentation. However, I went to today´s tutorial where Sandra and Nina kindly helped me and managed to come up with some good ideas, e.g. to use an axe to present the Viking raids and settlement by placing the axe somewhere on the ship so that visitors can click on it and then get more information on the Viking settlement.

I saw that Fiona got an axe as a freebie but I have bought another one nevertheless – it was only L$8 so I think I can afford that.

Wiebke

This is my first buy floating in the air…

Now that the virtual foundation has been laid and everyone knows his or her way around Second Life, it’s high time to turn to the content.

To facilitate our research, here’s a list of some “medieval” internet resources. As always, additions are welcome.

• Anthology of Middle English Literature (1350-1485)
• The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies
• The ORB: On-line Reference Book for Medieval Studies
• NetSERF: The Internet Connection for Medieval Resources
• Encyclopædia Britannica
• Old English Made Easy
• Middle English Dictionary
• ccSearch (Creative Commons Search)

I found this pack of medieval furnitures on the marketplace of slexchange, which I think would be nice for the equipment of our library. It would contribute to the atmosphere and maybe we can even have important writers (e.g. Gower, Chaucer) sit on the chairs reading (out loud) parts of their literary works.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lakeville/193/43/40/?img=http%3A//www.greylight.com/

uploads/GG-SLpromo2.jpg&title=Grey%20Gear%20-%20Affordable%20Perfection

Alwine

Things_002

Ursprünglich hochgeladen von sesphenmehit

I bought two trunks that could be used to display things (Visitors could open them and take out notecards or sth like that). One of them can be copied (I had bought two before I discovered that…).
The “Ornate Medieval Throne” and the axe were freebies that can be copied as well. So whoever might want to use those can have them.
The sword is from Waasland Castle.

Fiona/Coin

On our way through universe of SL, Blue Fotherington and me, Gredi Wobbit, discovered the Avilion Place. This land was built for Role Players. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Avilion%20Isle/140/233/64 There is an archery practice place where role players, assassins and the students of HHU can train their skills.  Also you can get a bow and arrows for free.  Another highlight of Avilion is the opportunity to organize a Sword-Tournament.

To fit us against viking attacks we bought a real viking armory shield and swords for hand to hand combat, bows and arrows for the distance fight like real knights. And to protect us of the sun and the falling heaven we bought a medieval iron helmet  :) .

All these weapons we can connect with some wars or special points in history. Maybe we can use notecards to give more detail information’s. Now we are searching for a solution to present these weapons accurate. One of the ideas is to create a small training place for knights, showing the weapons in use.

   Chris/Alex