By Natalie Sanchez
Here is the link to my NHD 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.
