At the beginning of the workshop, Dr. Chang Chih-wei, a postdoctoral research fellow in the HRC, introduced the “Searching for Coordinates in History” Plan and shared stories behind the birth of the database, “Searching for Coordinates in History by Keywords”. The HRC has been entrusted with executing this plan by the K-12 Education Administration, Ministry of Education since October 2015, and the database is a main part of this plan. In the database, there are 1,000 entries (keywords) which are “coordinates” in history covering four fields, i.e. the history of Taiwan, the history of China, the history of East Asia, and world history so as to meet future changes in the new “Directions Governing for the 12-Year Basic Education Curricula”. Besides, Taiwan is a member in East Asia, so the database specially created the history of East Asia section for users to understand more about this region.

Next, two research assistants of the HRC, Ms. Lin and Mr. Hsu respectively introduced basic functions of this database and explained how entries in the database were proofread and checked. In order to arouse students’ interests, Mr. Hsu took Taiwan’s popular drinks, such as bubble milk tea for example to introduce an entry “international commodities: tea, sugar, and camphor” and explained the development of tea culture in Taiwan in the past 400 years.

In addition, Mr. Hsu presented some entries of big events in a “today in history” way to connect the present (2017) to the past. For instance, thirty years ago in 1987, the Taiwan Martial Law was lifted by the President Chiang Ching-kuo (entries: Chiang Ching-kuo, and the lifting of Martial Law); forty years ago in 1977, the Zhongli Incident occurred in Zhongli, Taoyuan and resulted in successive political riots (entries: the Tangwai movement, and the Formosa/Kaohsiung Incident); fifty years ago in 1967, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was established (entry: ASEAN); sixty years ago in 1957, the Anti-rightist Campaign happened in the People’s Republic of China (entry: the Anti-rightist Campaign); seventy years ago in 1947, the February 28 Incident broke out in Taiwan (entries: the February 28 Incident, cultural conflicts and the February 28 Incident, etc.); eighty years ago in 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War began (entry: the Marco Polo Bridge Incident/ the July 7 Incident); ninety years ago in 1927, the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang launched the Northern Expedition (entry: the Northern Expedition); and one hundred years ago in 1917, the October Revolution took place in Russia (entry: the October Revolution). Mr. Lin also pointed out that 1977 was also the year when the first Star Wars movie A New Hope was released. Mr. Hsu’s talk caught students’ eyes and demonstrated how to connect history with our daily life.

Dr. Chang further explained the importance of knowing historical facts correctly by taking a Chinese history movie “Cairo Declaration” and its poster as examples. That poster emphasized Mao Zedong’s presence as if Mao attended the Cairo Conference. In fact, Mao was not there but was in China during that period. If one does not understand this historical fact, the poster may mislead the audience or even make the falsity to be true.

At the end of the workshop, students shared their feedback and said that they were impressed by the usefulness of this database. They believed that the database will be a good tool for them to learn history in the future.