Three Types of Notation

Notation is involved with performance. The Aztecs kept handbooks, bureaucratic documents and legal papers, as well as religious and historical books closely resembling poetry. Their writing consisted of highly stylized pictures representing ideas that could be spoken orally in different ways. The purpose of poetry-like books was to make myth and history unforgettably engraved in the minds of the students who read them. With the colorful pictures set in black frames on the page, they could internally visualize what a god looked like, for example. Students would memorize scenes visually along with verses of myths, histories, geneologies, and prayers. Reading aloud these versus together at ceremonies was one way Aztec communities "performed" the stories. History books may have been used to sing epics. Individuals could read privately out loud using the books to self-discipline as in yoga, because the business of life was to understand the voices of the universe.
The performance of Chinese poetry starts with the making of it. For the Chinese, poetry, painting and calligraphy are all three intertwined. Three types of characters are used: pictograms, which are characters based on abstract pictures of things, phonograms, symbols representing sound without picture content, and ideagrams, combinations of components from other categories. Chinese characters by nature are involved with gesture, and the idea of characters representing sound exemplifies the thouroughly ingrained performance of Chinese peoetry. It was usually chanted or sung, and idealy a poet would be a lutanist as well. Very interesting is the way an individual would read a friendly letter. Opening the letter, the first order of business would be to identify the over-all design feeling or mood. The way the stanzas were written would suggest the way the poem could be read. Some words would be elided, and many poems would be written to popular tunes.
As with the previous cultures, the English would use the written characters (word) to memorize parts they like. It could also be used as a script to read out loud with family and friends or something to verbally analyze in private. A regular rhythm and graceful phrases would be used to read aloud, and the regular stanzas would make memorization easy. English poems could use altered spellings to depict feelings and interpretations of chosen words the way the Aztec and the Chinese used pictures and varying characters to portray theirs. The poems are ambiguous, said to "ask serious questions and fill in witty answers without disturbing the original puzzle." After reading them aloud, the reader was led to ponder poetry. People shared poems but held private meaning significant to their own lives.

Web Experience

Since junior high I've used e-mail on the Internet. Then there was social networking sites. The ones I used early on were discussion board type places. I remember being very excited about chat rooms where I could type back and forth rapidly with random strangers. Inevitably school introduced me to educational uses of the Internet. I grew up with dial-up though, and it was kind of slow, so I only researched when I had to for assignments.  In college however, I eventually learned how researching for my own purposes can be helpful as well as fun with a little higher speed Internet.