Give 'er!

Introduction

I have decided to do a project on the Sargent Stubby and finish that up this week and start another tour on a homing pigeon named Cher Ami.  This tour will focus on the pigeon's missions and if not enough informtiaon is

Content this Week

This week was pretty productive and I compiled a great deal of information on Sargent Stubby and almost finished Stubby's tour.  I just have a few minor details to finish up.  Here is a link to the tour as of right now.  I still have some information I would like to add about his time in the United States, as a celebrity.  The pictures that I found were a good representation of stubby and great primary sources.

As a side note regarding Sargent Stubby, he was one of the highest ranking dogs in History and was the only dog to out rank his owner.

Cher Ami

The other tour that I started was about carrier pigeons.  Specifically, about the carrier pigeon named Cher Ami.  This carrier pigeon delivered 12 messages that were critical in the battle of Verdun.  As well as aided in the rescue of the "Lost Battalion" in the Argonne forest.  A picture of the pigeon is shown below.  On his last mission, Cher was shot through the chest with the message attached to his leg.  The pigeon refused to die.  Cher continued on his mission and delivered the message that contained the coordinates of the lost battalion.  This aided the American forces in finding the battalion.  The pigeon flew over 25 miles in less than 25 minutes.  This is still after being shot through the chest.

Here is a link to the tour of the carrier pigeons.  It is definitely not complete but has some information on Cher Ami.  Below is a picture from the tour itself with the location of Verdun and a guess of where the lost battalion was.

Notes to Do this Week:

also need to list my  game plan for the other projects

reminder to place a link to blog reference page.

as well as beef up some references

and the paper for capstone review to complete for presentation.  NEED TO DO!



as well as GEOG of FOOD plan for two papers with articles.

add to future studies in Irrigation project the countries that are in fresh water scarcity areas.

In the website labeled "crops and drops" need to add a section of problem with irrigation in world.  salination process and water logging the land.


Why this is important peice that the irrigation percent of farmland and the population of each country results in.  Why is the project important?  Why is that relationship or correlation important?

Week...

Introduction

This week was spent doing some research about other forms of Communication as well as working on my tour with Sargent Stubby.  I worked on the Google Tour and worked on some major information regarding Sargent Stubby.  Although I did do some other research on my capstone this week and that dealt with more of the GIS side of things including joining tables as well as manipulating data to work with the data in statistic software.  There is a reason why I do not take those classes.  Manipulating what seems to be a small event can turn into hours spent on it in order to make it look good.  Even copying a file can be the difference of allowing the data to work.  But I did find the information after talking with Christina.  

Results 

I worked a great deal on the tour builder that displays information about Stubby.  I performed some more research as well.  This included mainly secondary sources of which I listed in the Reference page.

Below is an updated picture of my tour in Google.  Here is a link to this Google Tour

Another update in the reference page was done, adding more of my view on certain references as well as some of the information I got from each site.

Adding to what I enjoy about the google tour builder is that you have an option to utilize some historic imagery that was taking of that area as late as the 1930's, it says anyway.

I also enjoy the 3D imagery that is able to be turned on or off.  Here is a great image of one of my map locations.  The location is focused on the Smithsonian Institution.  This is the picture of a preserved Sargent Stubby in the flesh.  Here is a link to there site...American Smithsonian

The 3D buildings are pretty unique site.  It allows the viewer to be more engaged with the site.  Google earth has become a great way to see foreign places and feel like it actually was a virtual tour.  One time my freind made a statement when we were at a fire and the stars were very clear and vivid, "These are better than the internet." hahah it was very hilarious.  This is becoming more and more realistic.  

One interesting Site i found was the Canada and Communication.


some personal critiques on website references as well as some more data with stubby



Questions

Should I put references in the tours I make or are the references in the blog okay to use?

Weekly Check in...

Introduction

The week consisted of me doing some research and looking into Sergeant Stubby.  I went to the library and learned to us the index system more efficiently.  I found some sources about Animal heroes and also ordered a few books through the interlibrary loan system.  One of the things I learned was to use quotations around words to use them as a direct phrase in what ever your searching for.

Results

Went to the library and learned that quotations search for that phrase not individual words this helped a great deal to find certain books easier.

Ordered a few articles about communications and animals.  I received an actual book just a few days later.  I did not expect that.  Some other books I received online via E-mail the next day which was awesome.  I placed the names and links to these resources in the Reference page on this blog.

Also I began a tour builder in Google for Sargent Stubby.  A picture or two will be on this post that will display my progress.  The link to this tour is right here:  Sargent Stubby

Stubby was in a number of battles and survived a gas attack as well as shrapnel from a German hand grenade.

Another point that I would like to mention is the main reason that I am using Google tour builder.  For one it is very user friendly and it is part of Google.  I have a great deal of application that are intertwined with Google.  This allows for easy uploading of photos and other videos. A great example is Youtube.

This is a video I found on Sargent Stubby.

But regardless, I do not like working with the ESRI Storytelling because of the complicated functions as well as the not so user friendly functions.  Such as the complicated adding the CSV file.  I believe that that function could have been made easier and a great deal easier to install and keep updated. The one nice thing about the ESRI program is the ability to change the HTML code for more personalization.  Allows the user to form a variety of displays to help the reader understand what is exactly going on.

Another thing that I updated was the reference page in my blog.  I place a number of links and bibliographies of a few books about animals in World War One.  Blogger is super easy to place links in the text it is as easy as pushing a button.

Conclusion

The progress I hope to make is get the tour done with Stubby and make plans for anther one on Animals.  perhaps pigeons.

A few more mention from Email and fix page for links
got a book today about animal heros in the great war

This is for 11/4

Introduction

The week was spent mainly study and working on a capstone project. I was reminded how to do certain things in GIS.  Put together a few maps that contained information on irrigated land and percent irrigated farmland.

Some information that was found was a newspaper article that had old newspapers that were archived to this site and I did find one artlicle that had information on animals and communication.

Results

The papers have a lot to go through and I will still have to get some more Information or atleast I would like to.  This week I plan to go to the library and do some research with communications and animals at the library.  My main thought would be to have multiple tours of different aspects of the communications lines for Germany as well as the British and Americans.  I did find out that the British used animals more frequently than any other country.  Germany did have a great deal of German Shepherds used in scouting missions as well as using their acute sense of smell.

Newspaper Articles

This is an image of the article I found dealing with animals and Communication

Questions

Neat article on the Sapper in Vietnam.


Well this is a perfect example of saving frequently.

This is the One

Intro

This week consisted af mainly research.  The over all idea is that I ended up choosing the topic of communications in World War One.  There is a good amount of information about this topic on a number of sites.  Down at the end of this post I will have a few links about the topic as well as more precise topic that I found on the website. A very interesting point to make is that because of the number of poor communication lines and radio beacons, a great deal of animals were used often.  The horse was important at the beginning of the war to carry artillery.  The dog was also important for a number of reasons. As well as the most known of the WWI animals the carrier pigeon.

Methods

The methods that were most often used was searching the internet and walking into the library.    

Results

The information I found was a great starter and got me into some great topic choices.  There was also a very renowned Bull terrier that earned a number of awards and metals.  Sargent stubby was his name and he was used a great deal for the beginning portion of the War.  Originally he was snuck onto the ship in the passage over to Europe.  Then after Sargent stubby was discovered he was allowed to stay because of all the soldiers grew to liking him.  He served his duty as bringing a medic bag to wounded soldiers as well as transporting important information to other regiments.  He also served as a scout to pick up the scent of poison gas?  He knows what the gas smelled like being that he survived a few gas artillery shell explosions.

This Bull Terrier was also known to aid and comfort the soldiers in the trenches as well as on the battlefield to comfort a dying soldier.  Stubby's acute hearing and smelling helped to spot spies and lurking enemy soldiers.  

Conclusions

The topic has narrowed down and I have a good idea at what my topic and project could be.  Perhaps the topic could be with Sargent Stubby.  I am also going to put as a reminder to look at Holtstiens books to see if any pigeon story are in there or hope fully a first account would be nice.

Questions

How is the topic of animals as communication if enough information is available?

Would google tour builder work for this any ideas I could use?

Ask Zach if he can use any information on animals in the topic of communications?

Or use the story of Sargent stubby as a google tour? as one small topic.  include other information on communication.

Some information on communications

World war one History in comunication  Very brief description of some forms of communications and which is more effective than others.

Pigeons this is a personal account of a pigeon that saved a great deal of soldiers

Sargent Stubby

Story of War dogs and descriptions



Great site with a personal avcount of a soldier using carrier pigeon and also the site contains information on using dogs as messengers, medics, guard dogs and scouts.

Went on awebsite that presented a prezi power point and found some information.  However, it was vague and had very little information overall.



stubby hero

Ideas for Main Project

Introduction:

The week's overview was mainly thinking about what I could do for a main project and the idea popped into my head regarding the background for my blog.  The silhouette of birds reminded me of the important role of carrier pigeons played in World War One.  It could be a very interesting project for me.  I could map or do a story map of a few different situations where birds played an important role.

The other item on the agenda is the tour builder for Google.  The idea is good and I have enjoyed the concept of flying from one point to another in some of the sample tours on Google.  

Results

Well some great progress was made on the Tour builder from Google.  Here is the link for the Tour.  France The Western France  

My opinion is that is is nice to see the map and some satellite images but I personally like the ArGIS story map a little better.  

And runnin' runnin'!

Introduction:

This week started off with a visit to the library where I found some great WWI atlases.  I will put the background information on those books below.  They are located next to each other in the basement of the library in the oversize section.

Results

The West Point Military History Series  Atlas for the Great War by Thomas E. Griess, Series Editor

Atlas for the Great War by Thomas E. Griess

I also got an opportunity to look into story mapping.  After a brief introduction to story mapping I created the story map below.  My topic was food of France.  Here is an image taken from the story map.  This is the link to the story map itself: Story Map of Food

For a first story map I enjoyed doing it.  There are a few confusing steps but it is pretty user friendly.  Easy to figure out.  I used Facebook and its albums in order to get the pictures in a smaller format