With Spring comes the promise of Medieval and Renaissance Fairs in schools and communities across the country. Such fairs are a wonderful culminating event in the study of the Dark Ages and our evolution towards Enlightenment. Imagine my surprise when I interviewed one school system about their Medieval Fair and they explained that their Superintendent simply signed a large check and hired players came in to run the whole event. Say it's not so! Students can research and construct and perform in much more meaningful ways than a hired troupe of performers! Consider these links in planning your own Medieval studies...and perhaps your own fair to celebrate all the learning that takes place!

If you're beginning Spring Break - enjoy! If yours comes the week after next, hold on tight! Thanks to Jim Cornish and Jerry Blumengarten for their recommendations for this week's issue.

• Battle of Hastings - http://battle1066.com/
  The event that signaled the birth of a nation. William of Normandy defeats Harold of Wessex and England emerges. Considering the impact this island-state had on world history for the next thousand years, this is pretty significant material. And the website handles it quite well with lots of Java-based animation since it has been overhauled. Click on the King for a guided tour or on the Bayeux Tapestry icon to study the battle from this ancient artwork. This site shows educators the potential power of a well-done website!
• A Compendium of Common Knowledge - http://renaissance.dm.net/compendium/home.html
  Covering everyday life in Elizabethan England, this website lives up to its name with all kinds of fascinating information about life in the late 1500s. Topics covered include games, money, marriage and family, services and occupations, religion, food, education and much, much more. Each local link offers a concise explanation, an illustration where appropriate, and links for additional information. Did you know that rather than Main Street they called their main thoroughfare High Street, and that you didn't reside on a street but in a street? Lots of information here for meaningful student research!
• Elizabethan Costuming Page - http://www.dnaco.net/~aleed/corsets/
  If you would like your students to research Renaissance clothing for a Spring Fair, this site will do you well. It intensively studies the clothing and mores of 16th century England through exhaustive research sources, illustrations, patterns, fabrics and accessories. There's an online course based on work from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks on clothing across 16th century Europe and links to other online resources that will help nicely round out your students' research experience.
• Glossary of Medieval Art and Architecture - http://www.pitt.edu/~medart/menuglossary/INDEX.HTM
  The University of Pittsburgh presents this alphabetized, frames-based site on the major terms and trends in medieval visual art and architecture. Each term offers a main definition and links to related terms with illustrations. Click on the entry word itself and link to additional images and a sound file that demonstrates the proper pronunciation of the term. Text based and plain in its format, this page may well be an unsung treasure in the sea of websites out there on medieval times.
• Journey through the Renaissance - http://library.thinkquest.org/C005356/
  This Flash-based website will allow your students to take an animated tour of the Renaissance beginning in Italy and traveling through time across Europe. You can take advantage of the Flash technology or use the Market Place alternative to sift through the content without having to make use of the plugin. Assuming you do want the full effect, you can opt for either a spoken guided tour or a smaller-sized silent tour. Running like an interactive multimedia movie, this is sure to get students' attention. Great as an introduction to the Renaissance!
• Medieval and Renaissance Instruments - http://www.s-hamilton.k12.ia.us/antiqua/instrumt.html
  This simple table of instrument names is a quick click to more than thirty instruments used during the Middle Ages, from the Bladder Pipe and Cornamuse to the Shofar and Zink. Each page offers a discussion of the design and use of the instrument along with additional links for further study. The images are crisp and clean and if you click on the main picture at the top of each page you can actually listen to the instrument sound in question.
• Medieval Science - http://members.aol.com/McNelis/medsci_index.html
  Want to integrate Science into your study of the Middle Ages? This site will help you make it happen, with a look at all kinds of information on everything from alchemists to societies and programs of the time. The links on instruments, for example, include the astrolabe, the armillary sphere, the torquetum and the water clock. Not all the links work, but what is available is truly worthwhile for student researchers wanting to learn more.
• Medieval Source Book - http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html
  Broken down into selected texts, full text sources and saint's lives, this site is a wonderful reference tool for study of the Middle Ages. The selected sources are vast in size and cover everything from the fall of Rome through the influence of the Byzantine empire and the rise of the Roman Catholic Church. Feudalism, the Crusades and the Renaissance are all given their due here. And there is no overemphasis on any particular nationality of movement; from the Huns and the Franks to the Celts and the Moors they're all here.
• Medieval Technology Timeline - http://scholar.chem.nyu.edu/~tekpages/Timeline.html
  From the Department of Chemistry of New York University, this virtual timeline is organized in 200-year increments from 500-1600 AD. It is linear and text-based in design, so you have to do your fair share of scrolling. But each event has an embedded link that takes the learner to a more detailed examination. For example, by 500 AD it is said horse shoes have become common. When you click on this link on the timeline, you learn that the Celts may have been using horse shoes as far back as 50 BC, but that they were in common use half a millennium later. There are a number of citations that offer evidence on the subject, many of them with links for additional reading. What a great way to integrate Social Studies and Science!
• Middle Ages - http://www.learner.org/exhibits/middleages/
  From the Annenberg/CPB Projects collection, this is an excellent presentation on medieval history using efficient, fast-loading web pages. Topics covered are handled succinctly with accompanying illustrations: feudalism, religion, homes, clothing, health, arts and entertainment, and town life. Each topic is broken into subtopics and related links are offered throughout the site. Since it flows nicely with an ease of navigation other sites can only envy, it can be used as an introduction, tutorial, or enrichment activity to supplement your class studies.
• The Middle Ages - http://www.byu.edu/ipt/projects/middleages/
  This Brigham Young University site offers lots of great information on everyday life in medieval times. Let the splash page fully load and enjoy the mesmerizing canticle in the background as you peruse the many resources offered here on Arthurian Legend, Arts, Literature and Games. There are student-generated newspaper reports on events from the Middle Ages, and reports on significant figures all done by Ms Schoonmaker's High School Ancient History class!
• Renaissance Tome of Adventure and Knowledge - http://www.sirclisto.com/
  "Sir Clisto Seversword" takes you on a journey through the Middle Ages in the first person using sight and sound to simulate a right medieval experience - very different! And now that the page has been updated there's even more to be impressed with: 75 chapters of information on every aspect of Renaissance life from armor, weapons and castles to architecture, arts and monarchs. Each chapter is a concise collection of links that look at the topic in-depth, so it's easy to zero in on just the right resource for your students.
• Virtual Renaissance - http://www.twingroves.district96.k12.il.us/Renaissance/VirtualRen.html
  OK so the index page is a bit much with the intense background. But once you get past it your students are in for quite a treat. Enter through Portal Five and receive a complete lesson plan for using this site with your students, who are required to apprentice for an artisan during Renaissance times. There is an emphasis on the study of the Guilds of the time and an opportunity for each of your students to become a master craftsperson in his or her own right. This site is set in Renaissance Italy, so it gives a nice contrast to other pages recommended on this topic which favor the later northern Renaissance.
  

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