History Fair - Round 1

Well, I got up at crack of dawn thirty and was on the road by 7:00am to head to my first History Fair judging for the year. I agreed to do this back at the beginning of February (I agreed to do state at about the same time). This is for one of the counties that is usually fairly strong for this area so I was looking forward to some good projects. I was originally slotted for Senior Media but got moved to Exhibits. Oh well. I'll probably be doing Media at State and probably Performance at Nationals (assuming that they want me back again).

So, I don't want to comment on what I judged in a public (or semi-public) forum as far as quality of various entries since that would be highly inappropriate.

However, I was intrigued by the various topics that came up. The theme this year is "Communication In History: The Key to Understanding" (for more info on the topic, visit the National History Day site at www.nationalhistoryday.com where they have the rules, more info on the theme etc. all posted.

Anyway, some of the topics that I saw or heard about today (from memory):
Navaho Code Talkers
John Brown
Identifying Friend or Foe in the Gulf War
Interspecies Communication (human and dolphin)
Disney Films
Television
SOS and the Titanic
TAP Code (Vietnam POWs)
Helen Keller (advances in teaching for the blind)
The Pony Express
War of the Worlds Broadcast
Alan Turing (Enigma machine)
Rosie the Riveter
Protest Songs
Early Rock Musicians
The First Thanksgiving
Radio
Reagan
Cell Phones
Amish (communication w/out electricity)


If I think of more, I'll edit this later.