Rooms
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Site Information, History, and News
Site History
The idea for the site stemmed from a research paper both Ben and Kurt wrote in their freshman year of high school. The next year that paper was adapted to compete in 1995 National History Fair. The paper became a ten-minute long script (now partly the basis for the RealAudio "briefing") for a "media presentation." Aldus Persuasion 2.1 was initially used to create a slide show to compliment the narration. The authors qualified for the national competition in Washington D.C. during the summer of 1995 and subsequently "upgraded" the presentation with Aldus Persuasion 3.0.
The site began over two years ago in October 1995. Originally, Kurt concieved the project simply to become more proficient in HTML, but after he learned about the ThinkQuest Internet Contest, plans changed. He devoted many more hours to the site and by August 1996 the website was ready for judging. Unfortunately, because of a technicality the site was never judged in that contest.
For the next few months Kurt moved the site to AOL's servers with the intention of maintaining it as resource for students. In February 1997, the Wisconsin Webfair judged the site a Distinguished Entry (the highest honor possible). When the 1997 ThinkQuest Contest was announced, Kurt quickly decided to form a new team. He recruited friend and co-author Ben Larson (who had just returned from a year in Germany) and entered the contest again with a totally overhauled site.
The search for a third and final teammate turned up Amish. The three team members worked from February to July to make over the entire site. All the pages and the site structure were completely redone. Almost all the content, pictures, and graphics were created anew. Hundreds and hundreds of hours were spent on the site, with most of the work being done in June and July. Finally, the project was submitted to the ThinkQuest judges at the end of July. The site qualified for the semi-finals (top 18% out of 1400 contest entries) on September 15.
Since November 1996 the site has had over 25,000 hits. The authors plan to keep updating and adding new features and content to the site. Please stop back if you are interested in learning more about the Cuban Missile Crisis. The more Technical Side to Fourteen Days In October
We divided up the tasks for creating the website among the three team members. Kurt was placed in charge of developing the HTML page templates for each of the rooms. In addition he was tasked with creating much of the navigational graphics and site organization. Ben was in charge of modifing the content and creating new content. He basically redid all the research and ended up completely rewritting the main parts of the site to create a much better reading experience. Amish was placed in charge of creating a interactive quiz and doing a couple of graphics. Kurt recently added the HTML based message board.
Hardware:
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[OpCenter (Home Page)] [Briefing] [Debriefing] [Quiz] [References]
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This page and graphics copyright 1997 ThinkQuest Team 11046. |
