Assessment
Historians have learned a great deal about the Crusades from chroniclers like William of Tyre and Ibn al-Qalanisi. Today, journalists travel all over the world to report firsthand on international events as they happen. Imagine what we might know about the Crusades had there been journalists on the front lines with access to television, cell phones, and social media in the 13th century.

Time for you to be an international journalist! Use social media to report from the thick of the action during the Crusades! Your assignment is to keep the world informed by posting 10 brief updates. Remember, as a reporter you should remain neutral and report the facts. As you prepare each update, keep the following expectations in mind:

Write a total of 10 posts. Your updates should be thorough, contain enough information to be interesting, and be written in complete sentences.
Include the date (if available), details about the events and key figures you discuss, the location, and the short- and long-term consequences of the events in each post.
Include at least two maps from the lesson with your updates. Be sure to explain how the geography of the area affected the events you discuss (ex. mountain ranges, bodies of water, proximity to the Holy Land, etc.).
Your updates should describe several different Crusades that happened over the course of nearly 200 years. Be sure that your updates relate to the Crusades discussed in the lesson.
Check out this sample post (Hint: this is just a post to demonstrate the writing style and does not reflect the content in the lesson.):

It's Monday, January 13th. I'm here reporting from the front lines with the Spanish troops who have gathered and are awaiting battle. The troops seem optimistic about their chances. They've each got heavy packs for what will surely be a long journey along the coast and then across the mountains to the enemies' front lines. They tell me they'll keep their mission in mind—to reclaim land for the Spanish crown. If they are successful, they'll gain the favor of the king. More to come after the battle commences.

1. Pope Urban calls for the First Crusade. Due to Turkish rapid expansion westward, Pope Urban called the nations of Europe to support the crusades and recapture Jerusalem. As Jerusalem was seen to be a holy piece of land, it needed to belong to the Christian world and the Pope wanted as much help from others as was possible.

2. Many European rulers rejected the call. The kings of Britain and France rejected out of spite since they had many issues with the Pope. What was problematic is that their nobles and vassals decided to join the Pope hoping that they would also attain power through their work with the church. People from Italy and Germany joined almost instantly.

3. After the crusaders managed to successfully take Jerusalem, they established an independent land. They wanted to purge all people who were of different religion from the city so they killed everyone in their way indiscriminately. This also included Jews, besides Muslims, as well as some Christians who managed to remain in the city.

4. Since the Seljuks managed to take the region for themselves, the second crusade was called in order to retake the region. Unlike the first one, the second crusade was unsuccessful and the Kingdom of Edessa was unable to be formed once again by the crusaders. This resulted in many losses for the Christian world.

5. Following the failure that was the second crusade, leaders of France and Britain managed to start another crusade in order to try and take Jerusalem again, this time from Saladin. They suffered heavy losses which resulted in the Treaty of Jaffa which ended the war for a while. Saladin proved to be too strong with his armies for Europeans to take on.

6. The forth crusade brings much of the same. In another attempt to get Jerusalem back, the Christian countries of Europe managed to get another large army and send it to recapture Jerusalem. This time, the mighty Venetian fleet and army joined too which resulted in the Crusaders having over 20 000 soldiers which was a lot for the time.

7. Due to difficulties in the war and people not agreeing with each other, the Fourth crusade actually ended with the sacking of Constantinople, not with Jerusalem. The Venetians who were fighting Byzantines for a long time managed to get the crusaders to sack Constantinople which resulted in the Western Church becoming much more powerful than the eastern.

8. The next couple of crusades were unsuccessful and failed to capture the spirit of the first one. This resulted in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth crusade having armies with much lower numbers and even fewer successful warfare endeavors than the previous ones. The Europeans were getting tired of going to Jerusalem every so often.

9. The final large crusade was the Ninth. As the previous ones, it was a complete loss, even though it seemed at first that there would be more successful endeavors considering there were a few victories in battles. In the end, the crusade was finished unsuccessfully and without any support by the people form Europe who ultimately had armies to send.

10. Although these were the major crusades, there was a huge number of smaller ones that were named after groups of people or specific battles because they were much smaller and didn’t encompass the entirety of Europe like the major ones did. They existed parallel with the major crusades, even though they didn’t get much time among the public.

Explanation:

I hope this helps :)