Project Overview

This project was developed to pay tribute to all the courageous veterans who fought for Canada in the First World War. We wanted to give people all around the world access to information on Canada's First World War veterans - information that history books cannot adequately provide. This project will be of great benefit to other students like ourselves. It allows students to read, see, and listen to the history of the First World War. Hopefully this will help students with projects and make learning more interesting. It is important to recognize that without these brave men and women, Canada would not be the same as it is today.

Our team would first of all like to extend thanks and acknowledgments to all those who helped during various stages of our project.

The Development Team who constructed this web site comprised two students, a project manager, and a researcher/technical support person. The purpose of this project was to provide a type of interactive history on the First World War by focusing on the veterans recalling their war experiences. Being able to actually hear the oral history that the veterans provide can offer a new perspective on war. We can actually hear the veterans talking about the new military techniques like the creeping barrage, advances in aviation and new weaponry. These sound clips, accompanied with text and photographs add a personal element to the war.

It has been a great honour for our team to design and develop such an important site. Throughout our project we had to make many content and design decisions in order to make this web site a success. Our team wanted to ensure that this site was as dignified and memorable as possible for all those who viewed it. We want everyone who comes to our site to leave with a feeling of gratitude to all our First World War veterans. Hopefully everyone will learn something that they did not know about the war before and tell others about the site. We want to attract as many visitors as possible so that everyone can understand how much these veterans sacrificed for our country.

To create this web site we had to learn many new skills. We first needed to learn what the Internet was all about and how to get around or "surf" the Internet. We used the Internet to search for ideas that we liked as well as appropriate icons, downloading plugins and information. To develop this site we also had the opportunity to learn how to use a number of different programs. For most of us it was our first time using many of the programs. We used Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) to develop the web site itself. Corel PhotoPaint and Corel Xara were both used for improving our images. These programs were very large but we now feel that we have a pretty good handle on them in comparison to the start of the project. We used GIF Construction Set to create our animated GIF, basically adding a little extra to our site.

Then last, but definitely not least, is Cool Edit which was used for our sound clips. We had to learn how to record the sound on to the computer, perfect the clips in Cool Edit and then encode the final clips and put them into our site. A scanner and the use of a tape recorder were necessary for scanning the pictures and digitizing the veteran tapes. We also needed to consider what the elements of good Web design were before we began designing our web site. Learning all of these computer programs was an excellent experience which now creates more opportunities for us if we want to pursue further work in this field.

Our team all agreed that working with Veterans Affairs Canada was an excellent experience. We found that they were very helpful providing guidance and input when it was needed. They supplied content including the pictures for our project. Their contributions were definitely appreciated. Everyone found that this project was a great learning experience. We are sure that skills we acquired from this project will be of great value to us in our future endeavors. Our group cooperated very well together to complete the project efficiently. This project was an excellent, interactive and educational experience for all those involved and the final product is an interactive educational site.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank everyone who contributed to our project, especially Veterans Affairs Canada for providing us with content and guidance for our site. We would also like to thank:

• Industry Canada and Ingenia for providing us with technical support;
  

• The Morell Region Community Learning Centre and Morell Regional High School for allowing us to use their facilities during our project;
  

• Margie Sheehan for all of her assistance;
  

• Wayne Crouse for his excellent photography work on this page; and finally,
  

• Island Cablevision and Holland College for our Internet connections.
  

Development Team

A special credit to Wayne Crouse for his photography.


Individual Photos:

Brent Mattheson: Team Researcher/Technical Support
Bachelor of Arts Degree at the University of Prince Edward Island. "This project has been enlightening and I have come to appreciate Canada much more."

Ann Drake: Project Manager
Bachelor of Arts Degree at the University of New Brunswick. "I thought this job was a great educational experience and I hope to do more work in this area."

Sean Walsh: Project Worker
Student at Morell Regional High School. "This project was an excellent summer job. It gave me a chance to learn more about the Internet, editors, and general World Wide Web page design and construction. It will also help me as I pursue a career in Computer Science after graduation."

Lisa O'Keefe: Project Worker
Business Administration student at the University of Prince Edward Island. "I found the project to be an excellent learning experience. It will definitely help me in my future career."



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