■ CyberFair Entry Category

Local Music

■ Description of "Our Community"

Shanguang Community is located north of Houli Li of Shijr Township and Chang Shu Elementary School is right next to the community. Because majority of the residents in the community relocated from Guangfu Township or Fenglin Township of Hualien County, Shanguang Community represents an urbanized Amis culture. Throughout the history of urbanization, this community not only has experienced a variety of ethnic influence, banishment, and damages but also marginalized and isolated by mainstream communities. As a result, it has become a high priority to bridge the cultural gap between generations in order to carry on our rich heritages. The Chang Shu Elementary School Choir is mostly made up by aboriginal students with a mission to promote Amis traditional music and dance in the community and to remind urban Amis of traditions and prides.

■ Summary of Our Project

We are a group of Amis children whose grandparents moved away from their root and settled down in the modern communities for making their livings. Since we are the third generation, native music and compelling dance seemed so distant. Hopefully, the founding of the school choir is a starting point to get urban Amis excited about their history and traditions. Because of the special topic project “Heavenly Melody, Innocence, and Root”, we had an opportunity to discover the beauty of traditional Amis arts and lifestyle and learned the legend of our ancestors as well as the original Amis nursery rhymes. Through the series of discoveries, the mystery of Amis Tribe is unveiled by our project.

Our school has two computer labs, each equipped with 40 computers. A total of 80 computers are networked together and connected to Internet through academic networking resources. Because of financial conditions, majority of students often were accessible to Internet only through school’s computers. Therefore, most students value their time spent online through school’s computer in order to learn cutting edgy technology and information.

■ Problems We Had To Overcome

Uneven Skill Levels：

Because our team was made up with students from various grades and classrooms, it has been challenging in task sharing. For example, graphic design and editing was over the head for students in lower grades and the overall progress sometimes negatively impacted our delivery schedules.

Solution：

As soon as we recognized a behind on the progress of our project, our teacher was notified. As a result, we were often grouped in teams to discuss issues and our teacher recommended a more specialized approach in task dividing in which lower-grade students were responsible for data integration and project overview while upper-grade students took charge of document and graphic editing. In addition, students with proficient computer skills were often nominated for web page making.

Meeting Arrangement：

Because of conflicts in individual schedules, we hardly had everyone in any meetings. We even had hard time to get everyone to attend meetings on weekends because of personal situations.

Solution：

Our teacher discovered this issue initially. Supported by group coordination, our team leader was authorized to assign individual tasks.

Web Page Design and Making：

Our team was totally new to web page design and making prior to the start of the project.

Solution：

With the principal’s help to contact Hope Agent Development Association, we were fortunate to locate volunteers from Christian Chun Yuan University. Through their unconditional supports and valuable guidance, not only did we learn the basics of web page making but also grasped basic ideas in related software tool. Finally, our web page for the Cyberfair project was completed.

Data Collection：

Once we have narrowed the topic of our project to Amis arts and culture, the information we gathered during the initial phase was trifling and lack of integrity due to multiple versions of information found on Internet. As soon as this issue was raised, our team realized that it was necessary to go all the way to our root to find accurate representations of Amis culture.

Solution：

After we presented the idea of a field trip to Hualien to our teacher, our team held a meeting with faculty to discuss the core concept of our project. Fortunately, the trip was approved and supported by the principal and other supporting agencies and a root-searching journey to Hualien had commenced!

Learning Interview Skills：

During the root-searching trip, we had planned interviews with reputable individuals from Amis Tribe. At the beginning, we were very intimidated by the interview process and had little ideas about conducting interviews.

Solution：

Through a series of practices designed by Chun Yuan University’s volunteers, we picked up the essences of interview skills and were able to put them in use during actual interviews.

Verbal Communication：

During the interviews in our field trip, we discovered that it was necessary for the third generation Amis to get familiar with authentic Amis dialect. Evidently, urbanized Amis like our parents or us are still having hard time communicate with elderly Amis or our fellow Amis in Hualien.

Solution：

Ms. Hui-mei Lin, one of our teachers, was born and raised in a traditional Amis family and her Amis language is very fluent. Because of her dedications in translation and guidance, we were able to complete our interviews successfully.

■ Our Project Sound Bite

One of the lessons we learned from this special topic project was the profound meaning of native Amis music and dance. Although Amis is a spoken language, it is extraordinary to carry on Amis culture through music, dance and verbal conversations. Therefore, the native Amis arts shall never be forgotten.

During the root-searching trip, we were determined to unveil the true meaning of Amis songs, representations of Amis traditions and culture. After absorbing the newfound understandings of Amis songs, the performance of Chang Shu Elementary School Choir has new meanings, by which Amis culture is beautifully expressed. From this project, we recognized our missions by which the spirit of Amis culture and traditions will be carried on.

After a series of research studies and supplemental activities, we came to the follow conclusions:

1. Although we faced challenges during the making of our Cyberfair Project, we were determined to resolve every problem. As a result, we were very amazed by our incredible team spirit and everyone was a great team player throughout. Moreover, we have grown as a team and we valued the interactions and connections between team members.

2. This project gave us an opportunity to put our ideas in use and learn from past experiences. Evidently, we had gained invaluable knowledge outside of classrooms through interacting with others.

3. Cyberfair Project features information technology and Internet and the project outcome provide opportunities for teams to share experiences with others. Moreover, while the beauty of Taiwan is fully demonstrated by participating team, we are very excited to share our teamwork with the world and hope to bridge the gap between people.

4. While we are so blessed with the convenient online searching, modern electronics such as digital still camera and digital video have certainly added versatilities to our project.

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