Track 17
Alison:
Greg:
Kirsty:
Greg:
Kirsty:
Alison:
Greg:
Kirsty:
Alison:
Greg:
Alison:
Kirsty:
Greg:
So, Greg, Kirsty, have you done much research fo r our project yet?
I haven't done as much reading as I’d planned to but I've
got quite a lot of books
and jo u rn a l articles that m ight be relevant.
Good w o rk Greg! I th in k I m ight have w orked out how we can approach the project
and give it a more specific focus than the title th a t Dr Jones suggested, which is too
vague.
Oh really - how’s that?
Well, we know that the New Seven W onders of the World were
chosen a few years
ago but I th in k that how they were chosen and w hat this says about people’s
relationships to th e ir a rch itectura l and na tu ral national heritage is fa r more
interesting than ju s t doing a project that describes w hat they are and why they were
chosen. What do you th in k Alison?
You know I th in k you could be right there. Didn’t Dr Jones
m ention som ething in
ou r last lecture about how many more people voted fo r some of the wonders than
the to ta l num ber of people in the country?
Mmm, that did happen. In a sense it w asn’t really a voting system at a ll - more like
a TV talent show. It w asn’t nearly as scientific as political voting
systems because
people could vote as many tim es as they wanted and it was a ll done via the Internet
so it only applied to people w ith access to a computer. And most of the votes fo r the
w onders came from the country’s own citizens.
Mmm, th a t’s interesting. I th in k therefore that we
can show how the modern
choices were different from the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
because the original w onders were chosen by tra ve lle rs w hile the latest list was
chosen by people from the same country as the w onder itself. From this we can
analyse the choices and how having a building or site
on this list could be more
advantageous to some countries than others. For example, countries w hich rely
less heavily than others on tourism may not have been
nearly as interested in the
whole com petition as those who wanted to boost visito r num bers. Then we could
compare this w ith how tra ve lle rs chose the previous wonders.
Okay, now I understand and yes I thin k it’s a great idea. L e t’s do it!
Yes, I th in k t h a t'll re a lly give us an edge com pared to the o th e r students. I t ’ ll
m ake the fin a l pro je ct co nsiderably m ore o rig in a l. R em em ber, Dr Jones is n ’t
expecting m uch fro m us given the re s u lt fo r o u r last project! But I’ m ju s t
s lig h tly w o rrie d th a t we m ig h t not have as m uch tim e as w e ’d like to do the
reading.
Mmm.... I see w hat you mean. Well, why don’t we
do as much reading of these
books and jo u rn a ls as we can and then m eet again on Friday to make a fin a l
decision on content?
T hat’s a good idea Alison.
Absolutely, then we can make sure we w o n ’t read too much and w ill s till have
enough tim e fo r the actual project w ritin g .
