How We Chose This Topic
We have chosen this topic because we were thinking about the topic: Communication in History: the Key to Understanding" and we narrowed down the topic to the history of phones. The reason we chose this topic is that the telephone is the fact that it is the world's most widely used form of communications. The telephone is a convenience that we take for granted , although it is a part of our everyday lives. Telephones are the worlwide networks that connect the world and make long distance communications a very simple thing.
How We Conducted Our Research
We conducted our research by researching books, (secondary source), websites (secondary source), and we asked some people, e.g. previous essays they have written about phones, and previous knowledge. We also reflected on our own experiences with the phone and how it is an essential part of our lives. To put things in perspective we imagined life without the telephone and how inconvinent it would be to do very simple things such as order a pizza.
How We Selected Our Presentation Category and Created our Project
We selected our presentation category by process if elimination. The categories were: Historical Paper, Presentation, Exhibit, Documentary, or Website. The Historical Paper was for an individual person so we ruled that out. Our group was not very good at acting, so the Presentation category was eliminated. So our remaining options were Website or Documentary. Since we did not have the adequate movie making supplies, we were left us with website which we chose. We created our website using HTML code. Our group members had a lot of knowledge about HTML, so we constructed a website from scratch, without using any templates. We read many books and viewed websites to get the best perspectives of the issue we were researching.
How Our Topic Relates With the National History Day Theme
Our topic relates to the National History Day Theme: "Communication in History: the Key to Understanding" because the telephone is the the most effective and widely used form of communication in the modern world. The telephone plays a large role in all of our lives as you can talk to someone across the world with the push of a button. This convenience has made the telephone the most practical invention in our age (excepting the automobile). The invention of the telephone was the most influential invention in many aspects. The telephone is an inexpensable resourece in military issues (i.e. communicating information to remote areas of the world where it would otherwise be impossible to communicate to others), in political issuses (i.e. campaigning by making phone calls and exchanging ideas with foriegn leaders without travelling), in social issues (i.e. to call someone to ask a favor, to call friends to invite them over, etc.), and even in medical issues (i.e. calling 911, calling an organ donor bank to see if they have the correct organs).
To think about life without the telephone would be very hard now, because of the introduction of cell phones. Now all of the features of a telephone can be used from anywhere, not just in your house. The phone has led to even more conveniences such as the internet. In conclusion, the invention of the telephone has been an extremely valuable part of our quest to understand and communicate better with the world.