When we learned that this year's theme for National History Day was "Rights and Responsibilities," we were a bit stumped, until we discovered the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The topic was immediately intriguing. Today, we live in a country where employees work in safe, sanitary environments, but, as we soon learned, this was not always so. The further we researched, the more we realized that rights that employees take for granted today and the responsibilities of employers are the results of tragedies in the past, one such tragedy being the Triangle Company fire.
With the assistance of our school's faculty members, we obtained two books on the topic of the fire. We each then read, and took notes on, one book, and compared them. Next, before further research, we discussed how our website should be structured and decided on five six pages: "Home," to introduce our thesis, "What is it?" to provide background information, "Reactions," "Rights," and "Responsibilities," and "More," to display our interview and photo gallery, each page having a few sub-sections. We then divided the research equally between the two of us.
Now with more specific "sub-topics," we continued to research individually, primarily online, and then, once again, we shared our findings. Through discussion, we came to understand that carelessness in the past, which led to tragedy, also prompted reform, in this case of safety regulations to protect human lives. Together, we constructed, edited and re-edited the text in the website, trying to incorporate this idea make each word count towards proving our point that the Triangle Company fire "brought about reform to workplace safety," (to quote our thesis).
The next big step in our project was creating an aesthetically pleasing site. This may seem trivial, but each element affects how the readers perceive and learn the information we are presenting. In this step, we tried to select photographs which emphasized the brutality of sweatshops, the horror of the fire and the outrage which resulted from it.
We began our National History Day project with general research, but as we learned more about the Triangle fire, the more we honed in on what we were to focus on in our website: the Triangle Factory fire was a tragedy which could have been prevented if closer attention had been paid to the safety of the workers. We paid special attention to the rights of workers and the responsibilities of employers at the time, and how they have changed since. We learned that though this wrong cannot be undone, Americans have, and still can, improve upon the regulations involving workplace safety to ensure that a disaster such as this does not happen again.
With the assistance of our school's faculty members, we obtained two books on the topic of the fire. We each then read, and took notes on, one book, and compared them. Next, before further research, we discussed how our website should be structured and decided on five six pages: "Home," to introduce our thesis, "What is it?" to provide background information, "Reactions," "Rights," and "Responsibilities," and "More," to display our interview and photo gallery, each page having a few sub-sections. We then divided the research equally between the two of us.
Now with more specific "sub-topics," we continued to research individually, primarily online, and then, once again, we shared our findings. Through discussion, we came to understand that carelessness in the past, which led to tragedy, also prompted reform, in this case of safety regulations to protect human lives. Together, we constructed, edited and re-edited the text in the website, trying to incorporate this idea make each word count towards proving our point that the Triangle Company fire "brought about reform to workplace safety," (to quote our thesis).
The next big step in our project was creating an aesthetically pleasing site. This may seem trivial, but each element affects how the readers perceive and learn the information we are presenting. In this step, we tried to select photographs which emphasized the brutality of sweatshops, the horror of the fire and the outrage which resulted from it.
We began our National History Day project with general research, but as we learned more about the Triangle fire, the more we honed in on what we were to focus on in our website: the Triangle Factory fire was a tragedy which could have been prevented if closer attention had been paid to the safety of the workers. We paid special attention to the rights of workers and the responsibilities of employers at the time, and how they have changed since. We learned that though this wrong cannot be undone, Americans have, and still can, improve upon the regulations involving workplace safety to ensure that a disaster such as this does not happen again.