Collaboration

  Creating this site was a great experience for us. However, it was not a simple work.
  At first a lot of students got to know about the project and a lot of them wanted to participate. Nevertheless, studying in the university is very hard itself and combining it with working over a project was a task that not everybody was able to fulfill. That’s why a lot of students who were primarily eager to take part, later gave up. Only those who were strong enough to combine working over the project with the essential studies, participated.
  So, a group of 4 students was organized.
  The topic of the future site was an important issue. A lot of time was spent on the discussion of it. Later we came to an agreement and got an idea to write about the city of Irkutsk. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop the debating. About a month or so was spent on discussing the exact topic. The point is that there were different opinions. Some of us wanted to write about modern Irkutsk as a youth and students’ city, while others thought that it’s better to write about the history and describe the historical centre. Then at last we understood that we are just speaking about the different sides of one and the same thing. Then it was collectively decided to combine the old and modern Irkutsk by describing the changes of architecture.
  The members of the newly-made group didn’t know each other well, because we’re students of different departments. So we tried to take a closer look at each other at the first meeting. We discussed what each of us usually likes to do and what everybody wants to do in this very project, so later we divided the work taking into consideration the interests and skills of each person. Sasha is fond of working in html, so that we put the technical side of our site at his disposal.
  We suppose it’s rather difficult to perceive the information without photos. Fortunately Alex was interested in doing this part of creation process. To work with photos was his childhood dream, so that the participating in this project gave him an opportunity to achieve his dream. But to tell the truth making photos wasn’t always successful, because we had to be aware of weather.
  The information about Irkutsk in our site consists of two main parts: the ancient Irkutsk and it’s history; the modern life and some places to visit. Sveta decided to describe the first part. She was dealing with the history of Irkutsk and had to read books to find out the way our city looked 100 years ago.
  The describing of the second part was Kate’s task. She interviewed young people to find out the most popular places to visit in our city. She also communicated with foreigners, because their opinion about our city is of great importance for our work.
  We all come from different cities, so the first problem raised was that for most of us Irkutsk is not a hometown and we didn’t know much about it. That is why a lot of time was spent to get acquainted with the history of the city and even some buildings and historical places that we didn’t know or just pay attention before. Frankly speaking, we should say that now, after building the site, we know Irkutsk better than some native citizens do.
  So, the work began. As we all are the students of different departments and have different time schedules, we also had to solve time problem. We had to be at the university all day long and spend a plenty of time together. In the morning we work over the project.
  We had dinner together at the students’ canteen. On the one hand we had to work hard over our site, but on the other we spend that time with great pleasure.
  Besides, there was a great temptation to deviate from the topic. Some of us were so carried away by the describing of buildings, that there was a real danger that our site would turn out to be a reference book. Fortunately, other members of the team stopped it and now you can see that the list of buildings is within the normal range.
  Besides, different levels of English were also a problem. We come from different departments and the programs of English studies differ a lot. Nevertheless, all of us tried to make progress for a successful work. We also tried to help each other, besides there was a great support from our teachers. We couldn’t find information in English, so we dealt with books in Russian and had to learn a lot of new words connected with the topic. It’s great that we had an opportunity to consult with the native speaker. The teacher of English from the USA gave us some pieces of advice of great value, which helped to improve our site.
  To make our site interesting for people of all ages we decided to create such section as “Interactive” that intends for various groups of people, either grown-ups or children. This section includes specific information about some places to entertain. We got such information with the help of the teacher of informational technologies, Pulyaevskaya Alexandra Mikhailovna.
  She gave us an opportunity to make a tour of some places. Firstly we visited Botanical garden that impressed us greatly.
We got a lot of useful information that was used at the site. The director also permitted to make some photos. The second point of our tour was the Seal Aquarium. We saw the performance of Baikal seal and bought some photos for our site. Besides, we visited the Children’s Railroad, that we liked a lot mostly for the way it resembles the real railroad.
 Despite of all the problems, the work turned out well. Besides, we really became a team. We hardly knew each other before the project and working over it helped us to know each other better. By the end of the work we’ve become friends and hope we will keep it.