2ºBritish: Magellan & Elcano (Stage II): The travels through America

The expedition of Magellan was full of risks even from the start. To begin with, they could not stop for many days in the coast of Brazil and refill their provisions properly enough because it was a Portuguese territory and someone could discover Magellan’s plans and steal the idea.

Secondly: pirates! With the demise of Spanish power (specially in the Caribbean) and the rise of other European powers there was a vacuum of power that would be filled with pirates and privateers. The Golden Age of Piracy (1650–1730) ranged from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean. Most pirates had served in the navy and were familiar with naval warfare and for years had been underpaid and survived poor conditions. Do you want to learn more? Watch this 7 minutes video from It’s History.

The most famous English pirates in the times of Magellan’s expedition were James Alday, James Logan and William Cooke. Be aware of them! In any moment you could suffer an unpleasant surprise... ha ha ha!

Extra! Pirates attack (theme song)

2ºBritish: Magellan & Elcano (Stage I): Preparation of the adventure

Sailing the oceans is not easy, specially if you do not know yet what you will find on the other side... Because of that, you have to prepare very carefully your expedition and your vessels.

There is a first worksheet you have to complete (on your on board scrap diary). If you need some extra help for answering the questions, there is plenty of information on the IAPH dossier (in Spanish), with wonderful illustrations about what is needed on board or the different parts of an exploration ship; and also the mariners museum web, including a complete guide of the Health measures on board that will be quite useful for your task.

Ready? Steady? Go!

4º British: Russian Revolution on Twitter

You are about to start the 7th edition of your favourite historical activity... twitter in class! 

This year it will be all about the Russian Revolution, a topic that we have never performanced before; you must create a special twitter account as you were one Russian character, that can be a famous or an anonymous one (choose your character from this file). With this “historical account” you become follower of @auladeadriana.

Specifically, you can find some extra useful info from Russian women in this links from British Library and Bolsheviks.

The application period will start THIS WEDNESDAY (12th February), at 15:00. Just send me an email with your chosen character and I will answer you back with the confirmation. Once that you have the confirmation (but not before), you can start making your character back to life :) You will have several days for creating the twitter account; the more “realistic” that you do it (portrait, biographic info, etc.), the better for your final mark.

The debate will start Monday 17th and finish Friday 21th, February.  You have to create a minimum of 20 tweets (12 of them base on real primary sources: texts, photos...) in the name of your chosen character. Try not to be independent, but “talk” with the others. I will help you with some clues for the timeline, so you will not be lost in the process.

I would also recommend you to use the hastag #HistoryatVasco in your tweets, to facilitate its reading.

The previous years, this experiment was a total success and your partners really did good performances, so you will have to work hard for leading them...

This work is individual and mandatory and will be part of the score at the end of the term. If you fail to finish it, do it out of date, or just copy&paste from a webpage, the mark will be a 0 for this work.

Be creative and enjoy it!