Well, the project is finished.  It feels really amazing to have built a webpage this semester.
This class was a bit difficult for me, not because of the quantity of work but because of the format.  I work well under pressure and with clear deadlines, so with only a final class deadline I found it difficult to sit down and chip away at my research.  I ended up doing most of the work in the last week.  In the end, I’m the only one that can enforce deadlines for myself, so it was a good learning experience.
I really didn’t keep up with the blog posts.  I think it would have been easy to write a couple hundred words once in a while but that gradual commentary on my own work doesn’t mesh well with my scattered brain.  Again, that’s something to work on in the future.
Travelers on the silk road.  I learned a lot through my research.  I was studying John of Plano Carpini and William of Rubruck.  My real plan was to look more into the perspectives and biases of these travelers.  I wanted to compare their views to each other and to the Mongols and analyze them.  I didn’t leave myself enough time to do that.
So I just compiled available information about travelers and tried my best to present it all with more concision and eloquence than the sources I got it from.
I’m content with our story map overall.  Everyone knows about Marco Polo and the Mongols but a lot of people don’t know the many interactions the West and the East had, or how close Europe was to being destroyed.  Hopefully our page will be a useful source for our fellow academics.