Project overview
Title：George Mackay in Taiwan - Website
URL：https://tmssocial.github.io/2022
Website introduction URL：https://tmssocial.github.io/2022/en-US/narrative.htm
School website URL：http://affair2.tksh.ntpc.edu.tw/wp/english/
Date of completion： 03-14-2022
School：Tamkang High School
Region：Tamsui
City：New Taipei City
Nation：Taiwan, Republic of China (R.O.C.)
Class：Humanities and Social Sciences
The title of this thematic research project is "The Legendary Life of Mackay in Taiwan". We would like to review Dr. Mackay's contributions in the fields of religion, education, and medical care in the northern Taiwan region (especially the Tamsui district) through literature research and interviews. In addition, we also hope to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Mackay's mission to Taiwan through the creation of a website, as well as promote the great spirit of Dr. Mackay's love for Taiwan and allow more people to acknowledge his resilience and selfless love.
The biggest roadblock we encountered, in the beginning, was the technical aspect of the project, due to our inexperience in operating art design software, and we didn't understand the programming needed to set up a website either, but we overcame the technical problems thanks to the guidance of our seniors. In addition, we also encountered the bottleneck of insufficient literature material during the process, which we solved by interviewing experts on the subject of our research. Thanks to these experts and teachers, who altruistically provided their views and opinions, we were able to acquire information that wasn’t available on the internet and address the lack of data. However, the biggest problem we encountered during the whole project was "lack of action", and because of this, the progress of this research project was close to being stagnant for a long time. We extremely appreciate the schoolteachers and seniors who didn’t give up on us despite our slacking and helped us complete all the website content, one step at a time.
It was a very honorable and unforgettable experience for us to represent the school at the International Schools Web Expo 2022. We encountered great obstacles in locating materials, interviewing experts, and conducting on-the-spot investigations at first as a result of the covid-19 pandemic over the last year. When confronted with these issues, we worked together to tackle them one by one. This process allowed us to understand that teamwork often stimulates the incredible potential of the group, and the results achieved by collective cooperation often exceed the sum of the individual achievements of the team members. In addition, the theme of our website is "The Legendary Life of Mackay in Taiwan". The reason for our selection of this topic for research was because Mackay's eldest son, Kai Rui Lian (George William Mackay) founded Tamkang High School, the school in which we study. When confronted with these issues, we worked together to tackle them one by one. This process allowed us to understand that teamwork often stimulates the incredible potential of the group, and the results achieved by collective cooperation often exceed the sum of the individual achievements of the team members. In addition, the theme of our website is "The Legendary Life of Mackay in Taiwan". The reason for our selection of this topic for research was because Mackay's eldest son, Kai Rui Lian (George William Mackay) founded Tamkang High School, the school in which we study, and Dr. Mackay's cemetery is also located on Tamkang’s campus. For all Tamkang High School students, Dr. Mackay is more than just a character in history textbooks, he and his family are founded Tamkang High School, the school in which we study year. When confronted with these issues, we worked together to tackle them one by one. This process allowed us to understand that teamwork often stimulates the incredible potential of the group, and the results achieved by collective cooperation often exceed the sum of the individual achievements of the team members. In addition, the theme of our website is "The Legendary Life of Mackay in Taiwan". The reason for our selection of this topic for research was because Mackay's eldest son, Kai Rui Lian (George William Mackay) founded Tamkang High School, the school in which we study, and Dr. Mackay's cemetery is also located on Tamkang’s campus. For all Tamkang High School students, Dr. Mackay is more than just a character in history textbooks, he and his family are an actual part of our campus life. In addition, 2022 coincides with the 150th anniversary of Mackay's missionary mission in Taiwan, so by participating in the International School Internet Expo competition, we hope to educate more people about the extraordinary life of Dr. Mackay.
| Information Technology used | Usage |
|---|---|
| Scanner | The conversion of relevant papers and documents into electronic files. |
| Desktop computer and Laptop | Organization of past years into information tables, verbatim transcription of oral materials, analyzation and organization of relevant historical materials, and creation of the thematic research project website. |
| Projector | Projection of relevant data for the teacher to revise, as well as the reports of data compilation progress by team members during weekly discussion sessions. |
| Smartphone | Allows team members to be linked to cloud data anytime, anywhere, receive the latest progress updates, as well as record the discussion process through photos or videos. |
| Art Tablet | Creation of website artwork. |
| Digital Camera | Used in the recording of rugby team practices and games, as well as oral history described by seniors. |
| Monocular camera | Photography and Videography of related competitions, visitation records. |
| Questionnaire | Completed using google forms and used to survey the current development status of the rugby team. |
| Pen drive/ Cloud storage | Store and backup data. |
| Computer software | Website construction： Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2022 Creation of artistic elements： Adobe Photoshop CC 202 Image processing：Adobe Lightroom Classic CC Cloud drive： Google Drive、OneDrive Word processing software：Google Docs、Word、Excel、PowerPoint Communication software： Messager、Discord、LINE、Gmail Browser：Google Chrome、Microsoft Edge Mind map construction：Xmind ZEN 2021 |
Over the past 150 years, many missionaries have come to Taiwan with religious zeal. Among them, non-other identified with Taiwan the most than Pastor Mackay. Not only did he marry a Taiwanese wife, but his two daughter’s hand in marriage were also taken by Taiwanese individuals. When he was 28 years old, he came to Tamsui, and he wrote in his diary: "I was excited when the boat entered Tamsui Harbor, and immediately understood that this was the place to be. No one has ever preached on this land before. Praise the Lord!" He fell in love with Danshui's natural beauty at first sight, a love that continued until he died of throat cancer on June 2, 1901. Dr. Mackay came to Taiwan from Canada and made his home in Tamsui as a base for his missionary work, medical care and education. After untold hardships, he established churches, medical centers and schools. He not only contributed a lot to Tamsui, but also had a great impact on Taiwanese society. The main purpose of this project is to help more people understand Mackay's efforts for his hometown, to help them feel his selfless dedication, learn from his love and sentiment for his work and service, and most importantly, we also hope that more Taiwanese can develop a deeper connection to the land where they grew up on and become a person who truly cares about their hometown through this website.
The reason behind our participation in the "2022 International CyberFair" was mainly because we were inspired and moved by our seniors. They signed up for the "2020 Taiwan Internet Expo Theme" competition last year with the theme of "Rugby Soul of Tamkang High School", and with it they were awarded the highest placement of the year - the Gold Award.
Because of their outstanding performance, we, the younger generation, yearned for the opportunity that we could one day shine on the stage like our seniors. Despite our ambitions, we encountered many technical issues at first, for we had no idea on how to set up a website, what we would do for the design of the webpages, and how we would produce artistic elements digitally. Just as the situation seemed bleak, our savior for this competition was sent to us by God – Howard Hsu, our senior. The senior not only provided us with professional and technical support, but also selflessly contributed his previous experience on participating in the Taiwan Net Expo competition, feeling that is was his obligation to guide us. He was not only our director when it came to technical operations, but also acted as our guardian angel, who supported us in our time of need. Senior Howard Hsu's care and dedication to us reminded us strongly of Dr. Mackay’s selfless dedication.
During the production stage of this project, the archives that we had collected and organized with great effort were accidentally deleted by a team member at one point. This tragedy became one of our most unforgettable memories from our time working on the project. All of us were extremely frustrated when the accident occurred, because it meant that weeks of hard work had just been unraveled in an instant. Fortunately, the incident happened during the early stages of the competition. Although everything had to start from scratch, the instructor told us that we could either continue to spend time complaining and being swallowed by regret, or we could view this accident as a "lesson" and find a way to turn our tragedy into a happy ending. Thanks to the reminder from our teacher, we learned from our mistake, and also developed the good habit of backing up files every time we edit the data.
