Outline of Specialized Research Plan

　　Environmental Awareness and Issues

Our hometown, HePing Village, locates in the area of SiouLin Township in Hualien County, Taiwan.  The main river here is called “HePing River”.  It used to be called DaZhuoShui River.  Its important geographic function is to divide Yilan County and Hualien County; it is the north river in Hualien County.  The river faces Pacific Ocean in the east, connects DaJia River in the west, adjoins LiWu River in the south and links to NanAo River and LanYang River in Yilan County in the north.

HePing River is one of the main rivers manages by the central of Taiwan.  Its basin includes NanAo Township in Yilan County and SiouLin Township in Hualien County.  Its left bank belongs to NanAo Township below DaZhuoShui Bridge; it is adjacent to mountain cliffs and its hinterland is small.  The right bank belongs to SiouLin Township and has a broader hinterland.

Most residents live in HePing Village in SiouLin Township; Taroko people is the majority, other races include Amis, Southern FuJian, mainlanders and Hakka.

However, on the land where our ancestors have lived for a long time, HePing River is facing different changes and destiny.  In order for the sustainability of the earth and environmental protection, we have chosen “green” power instead of nuclear power.  HePing River takes the responsibility of water power, which brings the trial and challenge to the community and the river.

Mankind has relied on water supply for drinking, washing and irrigating since ancient times; therefore, human life and cultural development are both related to “water”.

HePing River locates in the north river in Hualien County in Taiwan.  The ancestors of the aboriginal people, Taroko Tribe, have lived here by the waters, inherited the blood and built their homes.

We are a group of Taroko Children caring about the changes of the river in our living environment.  Through field trips, interviewing, discovering, solving problems, providing new ideas and the environmental problems of HePing River, we discuss whether the lives of the villagers have changed. 

Our research includes several issues as the following:

1. The current problems of HePing River motivated the children to do the research on HePing River.  In this case, the children can understand the characteristics of the river, the current problems of it and whether villagers’ lives have been changed. 
2. Interviewing elders in the tribe and recalling their early lives to experience the traditional culture value (Gaya).
3. By practical interviews and direct experiences of the situations of the river, the children can be closer to the environment of their hometown. 
4. Take part in community activities and put the ideal of loving the tribe, caring about the community into practice.

We hope that we can have a deeper understanding through the research of CyberFair and how we can sustain environmental protection and traditional culture in the same time and bring a new life to the community and the river.  From the eyes of the children and their innovation, our task of this research is to build a beautiful hometown all together.

School Internet Facility

Currently, our school Internet is fiber broadband, and we have one computer lab.  Uploading and downloading data does not cost too much time for students, teachers and parent volunteers to wait.  Because we spend most of the time of our extra-curriculum activities in interviewing and experiencing, we make our web pages mostly on Saturdays, and the teachers are responsible for the final adjustment.

Internet Facility at Home

Only few of the team members have dial-up networking or ADSL broadband; therefore, we usually discuss at school and use the facilities at school to log in emails, MSN messenger, Skype and exclusive forum for data transmitting and exchanging our thoughts.

1. School principal, administrative units and relative people have assisted us.
2. Parents helped us to contact the narrators and interviewees. 
3. School administration and teachers helped raising funds for activity expenses. 
4. The teachers provided vehicles for travelling to different places. 
5. Due to the limit of time, we use our lunch break and other free time to do this project. 
6. At the beginning, team members could only surf the Internet and type during extra-curriculum time.  During the information courses at school, enhance the abilities of the children to use digital video recorder, digital camera, and digital recorder and transmit data. 
7. The children do not understand tribe language while interviewing the elders in the community.  Therefore, we use digital devices to record the sound and images and sort the data and ask parents in the community afterwards.

Because of the particular living environment, the ancestors of Taroko Tribe lived in the mountains for a very long time and developed a unique life style from Chinese people.  They had a very close interaction with the nature.  The new generation growing up in modern society has departed from the primitive and happy past time.  This research has given the children more topics to talk about with their parents and the seniors.  The team has visited Peace (He) Community, leading them from ordinary (Ping) lives to the River (Xi).  This environmental action of these Taroko children had a lot of laughter (Xi).  The children have seen wonders in their trips (Yu) and remembered (Ji) in their Hearts. (HePing XiYuJi = HePing Adventures)

During interviews with the experts, they found out the talents who worked hard for the river.  In the process of leading the children to explore in the BiHai Power Construction, we knew how careful and great the construction was.  In the project, the children have learned not only the knowledge of the river, but caring about things happening in our lives.  They now have a better understanding of the community and people living here and treasure everything more.  Now, we hope that we can construct a website of online course of the river; in the future, we hope that we can take the responsibility to sustain the culture of the tribe.