Burken, Snyder Junior Division Group Website

Process of Our Project

We chose Gandhi as our 2012 National History Day topic for multiple reasons. When we began, our topic was the September 11, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers. After a couple of weeks we decided that the attacks were too recent and too common to be our topic. Last year in our World Geography class we had learned about Mahatma briefly, and decided that he was a great role model and a great topic for this years competition. After deciding that Gandhi was the perfect topic for us, we started to research. We took a trip to our local public library, and used their databases to access more online books, excerpts from different books, and multiple websites. Our whole gifted class spent approximately three and one-half months researching for 45 minutes a day with our school districts databases and books. Gandhis education and multiple acts and movements suddenly appeared in our minds as great topics to research. There was a plethora of information on our topic, but we greatly narrowed it down. We wondered What acts did Gandhi lead that led to overruling the British Empire? Our research then blossomed. We learned about acts that Gandhi created, and instructed and became familiar with many of them. One of the main acts that we researched because of its significance on the British Empires destruction in India was the Salt March. This led us to the questions: Why did the British Empire get so frightened when Gandhi created the Salt March? Why did the British become so frustrated? The answers quickly became clear to both of the questions. We found websites that provided us with many primary video clips with information about how the Indians felt about the Acts and the Britishs reactions to these acts. These websites were large contributors to our project. With the online books we printed, and the short biographies we printed, we began to analyze by highlighting key points and writing these points down on color coated note cards. The printings we used helped us reach a whole new understanding of Gandhis life outline and struggles. When we first decided Gandhi was our topic, we then began making a documentary for our presentation. After one week, we both realized that we did not have enough experience with the programs so we chose to do a website like the previous year. We wrote down the points that we wanted to include in our topic in many graphic organizers, then created different pages for our website. Pictures began being inserted into our project along with our researched information. Most of our time was spent on proof reading our paragraphs. Finally, our topic fits the 2012 theme for this years History Day competition because Gandhi reformed the Indian government, the Indian citizens and the British Empire reacted to the acts Gandhi led and created, and there was a great improvement in the Indian government as well as a total revolution in the previous government system. (Word count 499)