Like all other projects, this thinkquest project is not a smooth-going one, and we’ve faced countless problems on the entire duration of this project. These problems are generally technical ones, and they in turn lead to a great time problem.
First of all, we encountered a slight problem when registering for this project at http://www.advanced.org, as we had to fill in a very long form. Since one of our group members was not present at that time, we had some trouble filling in his particulars and had to make do with some fake ones so that we can register on time. There was only an hour or less for us to register but we had to fill in very long forms like one on why we choose this topic and one on what we’re covering for this topic. Luckily, the particulars can be changed later and we were able to complete in on time to register.
Secondly, during the beginning course of the project, we tried several times to research on it. It was only after a few attempts that we realize our project topic is more of an interview-discovery type rather than the usual research type. This wasted quite a lot of our time, as we couldn’t obtain any information after a few weeks.
Thirdly, in the course of our survey, we had quite a lot of trouble getting back the survey forms we sent out. Finally, we decided to just survey the people on the spot and get it back from them there and then. As a result of the first point, we lost quite a lot of our survey forms and only manage to get back a fraction of what we photocopied.
Fourth, due to our tight and busy schedule everyday, including the holidays, we had problems meeting up with each other for discussions and had to make do with phone discussions or through the internet.
Next, we encountered numerous technical problems which included problems with our printers, our computers, and even internet access. First of all, we are often unable to print out the information we had to show our mentor at the starting few months as our printers were either not working or out of ink. To top it up, Charles’s computer was sent for servicing during the June holidays and was unable to continue work on the webpage for the entire month as the servicing company was very inefficient and did not do a fast job. Also, Daniel’s computer was sent for repairs after the June holidays and some of the stored information in his computer could not be sent for printing and we ended up having to redo some of our work. In addition, the a: of Eugene’s computer was not functioning and thus information could only be passed around through the internet instead of through diskettes and due to some strange problems with his printer, he could not print out any information until the project deadline.
Due to these technical problems we faced throughout the project, many additional problems cropped up as well. The main effect of all these technical faults we had was a lack of time to do our project. This is because without our computers, many things like creating the webpage or typing out the information could not be done. During this time, we ended up having to first write out what we have on pieces on paper before we could transfer it onto our computers which only came back during July.
Finally, the greatest problem we had was the uploading of our webpage. Due to computer malfunctions, we couldn’t start the uploading until after the holidays. However, during the course of uploading, when we wanted to view the result of our work, we couldn’t log onto our website. We tried uploading one page of our project into /22586/cgi-bin/login/index.htm. When we tried to view our page, we were prompted for our user name and password. However, we did not remember any user name we had and we tried our userid instead, which was already shown inside the prompt box. It did not work for some reason and we were unable to view our page. When we asked our mentor for help, we were told to try the teacher’s userid instead. This did not work too. Finally, we tried re-uploading the entire page and tried typing our userid for the user name again. It worked at last and we were able to access our webpage. However though, it was still not up to satisfaction as some of our image graphics couldn’t get uploaded and the song on our front-page wasn’t loaded either. We are still trying to figure out the problem of this and should be able to solve it before the submission date of thinkquest.
The above are only a few of countless problems we’ve encountered. Some of these are minor ones but these minor ones add up to create a whole deal of trouble to us. However, we strive on despite these tough problems and rose to the occasion and completed our project. It was definitely not a smooth-going project for sure but it was a really interesting one. We had a great time discussing with each other and obtaining information from our fellow friends. All in all, we are quite pleased with our thinkquest website considering the fact that we encountered significant more problems than other projects we did the previous years and this year.