Category: 7. Environmental Awareness

1.Description of Our Community：

        Chang Hua County is located in the central parts of Taiwan. West of it is the Taiwan Strait. North of it is the Tai-Chung County, separated by the Da Du River. South of Chang Hua is the very wide Tsuo-Shui River that parts Chang Hua with the Yun-Ling County. East of Chang Hua are the Ba-Gua Mountains and the neighboring Nan-Tou County.

       Chang-Hua County is situated on the plains in the middle part of Taiwan's west coast. The climate is dry. Chang Hua plains is the northern tip of the mid- and south plains. It is just south to the Da-Du Plateau. The coast line goes from Northeast to Southwest. The ocean winds directed blow to the plains, therefore, the plains are severely damaged by sea-salt.

       The Garden Freeway of Tien-Way of Chang Hua is the famous floral marketplace and a famous resort for viewing flowers, but because it also brings in and hosts many other imported plants, thus causing serious impacts to Taiwan’s primary endemic plants.

2.Summary of Our Project：

        From the Green Cancer—Bine Blue Blossom to the scary and deadly Red Fire Ants, foreign species of plants and animals have created serious impacts to Taiwan’s environment and have affected our lives. The impacts of foreign plants to Taiwanese endemic plants are of our major concern here.

        Our school, Ta Shin Elementary School of Chang Hua County, was assisted by the Chang Hua County Government to become a plant ecological campus. Species of newly planted trees in the campus exceeded two hundred. Among them, most are Taiwanese endemic plants. Especially worthy of mentioning, there were twenty kinds of Taiwanese endemic trees, such as Taiwanese Rhododendron, Yu Shan Myrsinaceous, Taiwanese Triangular Maple, and Lan-Yu Cassia, etc.

        This research will introduce Taiwanese endemic plants available in our campus, the relationships between Taiwanese endemic plants and foreign plants, and the effects they have. By collecting data and information, visiting Taiwanese Endemic Plants Center and Chang Hua’s Endemic Plants Center, and interviewing scholars and experts, we were able to delve deeper into the subjects – “Taiwanese Endemic Plants in our Campus” and give a better introduction.

3.Our Computer and Internet Access：Academic Broadband Optical-Fiber Network

        Setting up the website: We set up a “Campus Ecology Information Network” website and instantly shared the data and photos for the research.

        Our School’s Network Environment: We have one Computer Classroom. There are 35 computers for students to use. All the computers in the school are collected to the Internet to allow us to inquire data, find information for class discussions, and print documents at our school.

        Team Member’s Network Environments at their homes: Each team member has a computer at home collected to the Internet by ADSL. After school, we use e-mails to continue the research work.

       Wireless Broadband Campus Environment: Students use PDA and notebook computers to inquire relevant data wirelessly in the campus.

4.Problems We Had To Overcome：

                         We, the Sun Forest Explore Team, started full with energies and excitements and continued to the end, just like the sun. The followings are generalizations of the problems we encountered and our solutions for solving the problems:

5. Our Project Sound Bite

        Local plants are very charming, beautiful and natural. They are flexible to fit into the environment to survive. It is important to classify our knowledge and learn how to be a good member in the Mother Nature. We had fun and we really cherish this valuable experience.

6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?

Teacher's Professionalism

        Joining this research project helps the teachers of this team to form a small learning organization. Through continuous discussions with the students and teachers of other fields, the teachers contributed their expertise in the activities. We also had to be familiar with the process and skills of conducting the research project. Also, we were able to set up good foundations for doing similar professional researches in the future. Not only these, we also enhanced teacher’s personal professional images and professionalism; reached the objective of allowing students and teachers to learn from each other.

Student’s Learning Experiences

       In the One-to-Ninth-Grade Curricular Reform, we emphasize integrating individual subjects and applying student’s own competencies.  Throughout the research processes, the participating students were able to enhance and integrating their various abilities in different subjects.  They also applied to the homepages.The learning results will help the students to learn independently and improve their interests in learning in the future.

Concrete Learning Results are as the followings：