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>>The Conquest Of The West
>>The Greeks & Further Back >>The Romans >>The Germanic Invasions >>Conclusion >>Bibliography |
The Project
=The Rationale=
The world today is surrounded with information technology- satellite television, video conferencing and of course, the internet. Having often been provided valuable knowledge from the internet, we decided to turn the tables and contribute to the growing wealth of knowledge that exists in this ever-growing database.
The research process also intrigued us. More than often, schools have the tendency to “feed” students with bits and pieces of information to duplicate in examinations. “Thinkquest” allowed us the opportunity to discover, sift through and analyse data in a way that is usually limited in school and thus, we were thoroughly excited to participate in this project.
Not just the structure of the competition, but the breadth of topics given appealed to us greatly. After much deliberation and agonising, we finally chose “Colonialism and Conquest”. As four of us come from a country (and one of us grew up in the same country) that was once a colony of the British, we were naturally drawn towards this topic initially.
However, after some thought, we decided to give a twist to the question. When one thinks of “colonialism” and “conquest”, it is common for ideas of the European war machine and international supremacy to emerge. As such, we felt that it would throw a new light on the topic to examine it from an angle where the Europeans were the “colonised” instead.
Hence, our project was born.
The five of us- Benita, Celina, Joanne, Tara and Zhenling- were former classmates in our Secondary Two year at Raffles Girls School (Secondary) in Singapore. We soon became bosom friends, preserving our ties even when Tara left to study in Canada, and when the rest of us separated into two different junior colleges after our GCSE ‘O’ levels.
Zhenling first heard of “Thinkquest” and subsequently introduced it to the rest of us. We were all immensely interested by the nature of this competition and decided to do it together.
As Tara is studying overseas and Joanne studies at a different school from the other three of us (Benita, Celina, and Zhenling), meeting up with one another proved to be a challenge. As a group, we thus took the opportunity to carry out the initial collaborative work when Tara returned to Singapore in July for a short visit. All other discussion had to be carried out online or among a few individuals who then conveyed the proceedings to the other members.
=Raffles Girls' School (Secondary), Singapore=
Mrs Cheriyan was kind enough to agree to be our primary coach, even though we were no longer her students. As our history teacher back in secondary school, Mrs Cheriyan's influence inspired us to attempt the "Colonialism & Conquest" theme, despite the fact that all but one of us are currently science "majors", and have had no contact with History since we graduated from secondary school. She has always encouraged us to think beyond the scope of our syllabus, and part of the reason why we decided to approach this topic from the point of view of Europe as the "conquered" instead of the conquerors is due to her feedback.
We are very grateful to both her and RGS for allowing us to enter the Thinkquest competition under the school's authorisation.
=The Rationale=
The world today is surrounded with information technology- satellite television, video conferencing and of course, the internet. Having often been provided valuable knowledge from the internet, we decided to turn the tables and contribute to the growing wealth of knowledge that exists in this ever-growing database.
The research process also intrigued us. More than often, schools have the tendency to “feed” students with bits and pieces of information to duplicate in examinations. “Thinkquest” allowed us the opportunity to discover, sift through and analyse data in a way that is usually limited in school and thus, we were thoroughly excited to participate in this project.
Not just the structure of the competition, but the breadth of topics given appealed to us greatly. After much deliberation and agonising, we finally chose “Colonialism and Conquest”. As four of us come from a country (and one of us grew up in the same country) that was once a colony of the British, we were naturally drawn towards this topic initially.
However, after some thought, we decided to give a twist to the question. When one thinks of “colonialism” and “conquest”, it is common for ideas of the European war machine and international supremacy to emerge. As such, we felt that it would throw a new light on the topic to examine it from an angle where the Europeans were the “colonised” instead.
Hence, our project was born.
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|
The five of us- Benita, Celina, Joanne, Tara and Zhenling- were former classmates in our Secondary Two year at Raffles Girls School (Secondary) in Singapore. We soon became bosom friends, preserving our ties even when Tara left to study in Canada, and when the rest of us separated into two different junior colleges after our GCSE ‘O’ levels.
Zhenling first heard of “Thinkquest” and subsequently introduced it to the rest of us. We were all immensely interested by the nature of this competition and decided to do it together.
As Tara is studying overseas and Joanne studies at a different school from the other three of us (Benita, Celina, and Zhenling), meeting up with one another proved to be a challenge. As a group, we thus took the opportunity to carry out the initial collaborative work when Tara returned to Singapore in July for a short visit. All other discussion had to be carried out online or among a few individuals who then conveyed the proceedings to the other members.
|
|
=Raffles Girls' School (Secondary), Singapore=
Mrs Cheriyan was kind enough to agree to be our primary coach, even though we were no longer her students. As our history teacher back in secondary school, Mrs Cheriyan's influence inspired us to attempt the "Colonialism & Conquest" theme, despite the fact that all but one of us are currently science "majors", and have had no contact with History since we graduated from secondary school. She has always encouraged us to think beyond the scope of our syllabus, and part of the reason why we decided to approach this topic from the point of view of Europe as the "conquered" instead of the conquerors is due to her feedback.
We are very grateful to both her and RGS for allowing us to enter the Thinkquest competition under the school's authorisation.
| Updated >> 21 September 2004 |