Spanish American War website

Reflection:

            For my NHD project, I chose to research the Spanish American war. I was originally going to research the history of Ellis Island, and create a project surrounding the topic, but I changed my mind when I came across a website about the Spanish American war. I was researching Ellis Island, when I remembered that we were learning about wars in history class, and thought that it would be a better idea to research wars instead. I started researching U.S. wars, when I found the Spanish American war. I read that in this war, Puerto Rico was involved. I am Puerto Rican, so this caught my attention. When I opened this page, I read about the Spanish misrule over Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines. I also read about how the United States defended Cuba from their oppressive leaders. The aspect that most caught my attention, however, was the yellow journalism involved with the history of the war. Hearst and Pulitzer were newspaper publishers who used yellow journalism, or exaggerated political cartoons, to inform the New York public about the events of the war. Soon their newspaper publications gained a lot of fame throughout America. The citizens of, not only New York, but also America, looked to these newspaper articles to get all of the latest news on the war. The history of the war was fascinating to me because of yellow journalism’s pertinence to it.

            I had many presentation formats to choose from. I could have made a documentary, set up a live performance, written a paper, or create a website. I didn’t want to make a documentary because I am not very good with imovie, and I didn’t want to set up a live performance because I was afraid of performing in front of too many people. I had already written a paper last quarter, and it didn’t turn out as strong as I would have wanted it to, so I went with the website. I felt that if I chose to create the website, it would be easiest for me and I would be able to manage it easier and videos and pictures and links pretty easily. This was the category where my strengths could be displayed.

            I ran into some trouble with the project when it came time to actually put the information on the website and on the essay. I knew what happened in the war, and I researched the history thoroughly, so I knew the facts. It was just extremely hard to develop an idea. I talked to Ms. Laufenberg about this, and she suggested that I should bring up aspect of yellow journalism in the war. I went with this, and decided to go with the debate theme of the NHD project. I posed the question, did yellow journalism start the war or not? In the end, I answered the question while backing up my points with quotes from secondary sources and also with primary source images.

            The best part of the project was looking for the history of the war. I love digging into the history of things and finding things out about the past and how they pertain to the present. It’s exciting; like finding a diamond in a pile of soil. I thought I did a very good job in stating facts about the war, and laying out the timeline of the war.

            If I had the chance to do this over again, I would probably make the website a bit more crappier, make it a bit more interesting. I would also, develop more points of the war and be more thorough with the explanations of my points.