¡¯Category in the competition: Domestic Leaders


¡¯Our Local Community is:
Lin Ming Elementary School is in Ilan City and only 15-minute drive to the address of Cloth-horse Color Boat Drama Company of Master Lin Rong-chun in Yuanshan Town, Ilan County.

Yuanshan Town is also called the Original Town of Taiwanese Opera. From the researches, during the Japanese occupation, Ou Lai-zhu from Yuanshan taught people singing local songs under the 1,000-year old aubergine tree in Toufen Village, Yuanshan. Later, these local songs turned into the Taiwanese Opera. Influenced by it since early childhood, Master L in Rong-chun not only studied local songs but also applied their music and actions into Cloth-horse Formation.

In the Web Fair last year, we once conducted an investigation on local songs. This time, we focus on Mr. Lin Rong-chun¡¦s Cloth-horse Formation. Besides the particular warmth, we also understood the disappearance and difficulty of maintaining the traditional craft. As a result, in addition to recording such disappearing local culture via web pages, it is also our hope to emphasize and support these traditional crafts.

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¡¯Summary of the project research program:
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To more clearly introduce the Cloth-horse Formation and Master Lin Rong-chun, we divide the entire project research program into three major parts. The first one is exploration on documents on Cloth-horse Formation; the second is the interviews with Master Lin Rong-chun and the traditional crafts school and the third one is participation in the promotion at schools. The program is detailed as follows:
1. Asking for members to participate in the competition
2. Discussing research theme and the name of the team
3. Completing the information for the competition online
4. Task allocation and collection of written information
5. Contacting Master Lin Rong-chun and issuing the first outside interview notice
6. Visiting Drama Museum and Information Fair in Ilan County
7. Discussion on what learnt from the visits and practicing interview skills
8. Applying for public leaves and insurances
9. Composing the work plan and the first uploading of weekly journals to the Internet
10. Discussions on drafts of interviews with teachers and students

11. Visiting Cloth-horse Formation Association of National Ilan Special Education School and Cloth-horse Formation Association of Zhu An Elementary School
12. Discussions on drafts of interviews with Master Lin Rong-chun
13. Interviewing Master Lin Rong-chun in Yuanshan¡C
14. Visiting Cloth-horse Formation Association at Da Hu Elementary School
15. Compiling written information and word-by-word interview drafts
16. Submitting articles to the School Magazine
17. Report on Cloth-horse Formation by Class 506
18. Preparing exhibition at school and questionnaire
19. Guide to exhibition at school
20. Planning webpage structure
21. Composing webpage contents
22. Making webpages
23. Uploading webpages
24. Testing and revising webpages

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¡¯Our Internet environment:

The school provides T1 network with bandwidth of 1.5 M offered by Hinet ADSL as the resources structure for students. The 80 computers at the computer classroom for students offer online capability around the clock. Other equipment available includes two scanners and one network printer. In addition, each classroom has a computer for online use. A color and black and white printer are available for students of each year. As for storage, there is a Linux mainframe at the school computer classroom for individual information of students and webpages. Each of the seven students in the team has a computer at home to go online. They can search information both at school and home.

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¡¯Problems we encountered and conquered
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Problems encountered

Descriptions

Our solutions

The time available for students to interview does not match that of the interviewee.

Students love to interview. However, the time of having class and interviews often conflicts. Besides, many students have to go to cram schools after school. As a result, we were under constant tests.

Teachers conduct interviews and recordings on their own. Relating and discussions were made separately.

Security issues

The security is the most important thing when students go out. However, out interviews were often decided in a sudden and were forced to give up the arranged interviews due to insurance papers.

We tried to settle the interviews and submit the insurance coverage time in advance as much as possible ing.

Being unable to speak Taiwanese

Although both students and teachers speak a little Taiwanese, compared with that of Master Lin Rong-chun, ours became a foreign language and we were unable to comprehend Master Lin Rong-chun¡¦s words.

Fortunately, Master Lin Rong-chun could understand Mandarin. Therefore, we combined Mandarin, Taiwanese and postures and finally completed the interview.

Ideas of teachers and students of participating in the program are different.

Although we students are interested in participating in the program, arranging materials and typing of interview contents is a tedious job. We had little interest.

Having detailed discussions with students and explaining to them that the ensuing information arrangement and explanations are the most significant part of the research.

Insufficient activity funds

Even though the school expressed to support the funds, we were unable to apply for settle the expenses by the school budget¡Xe.g. buying pearl milk tea for students as gifts for their work.

This year, Dean of Academic Affairs prepared the budget of NT$4,000 for daily expenses of the research and we no longer needed to settle the account.

Urgency of making the webpages

The teacher responsible for making the webpages exited from our team and we had difficulties making the webpages.

We immediately requested teacher Yu-hao, with superb skill of making webpages, to design the webpages and re-allocated the jobs of each member.

Cooperation with teaching of the school remains to be improved.

After trying very hard to conduct the field investigation, the information we had was still only spread within our team but not reused effectively.

We discussed with the Dean and the Principal on the method of exhibition, explaining our research details and provided teachers and students with the information of Cloth-horse Formation and Master Lin Rong-chun.

There are still so many things left undone.

The more interviews we had with the people involved, the more people we found that we needed to interview and the more information we needed to collect¡K

Although the load of our job gets increasingly heavier with the approaching of date of uploading webpages, teachers and students felt proud for the achievements we had!

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¡¯Our thoughts:

We believe many people saw the funnily dressed Cloth-horse Formation in the processions of deity reception ceremonies. Yet, few people know something about the Cloth-horse Formation people in large red robes and Champion hat running hurriedly and rolling from time to time. Master Lin Rong-chun we visited is as old as 78. To maintain the tradition of Cloth-horse Formation performance, in addition to occasional public performances, he dedicates to teaching of Cloth-horse Formation at schools. Due to changes of time, many of traditional arts are disappearing with the passing of masters; Cloth-horse Formation is also encountering the same fate of no successors.

Looking at the passionate but lonely sight of Master Lin Rong-chun¡¦s back, we were fully aware of our missions. Besides presenting characteristics of Cloth-horse Formation, the most important thing is to make more people aware existence and artistic values of Cloth-horse Formation. Therefore, we prepared many activities of publicity at the school such as submission of articles, projects reports of classes and exhibition. It is our hope that, from promotion at the school, we can establish an exclusive website introducing Cloth-horse Formation and Master Lin Rong-chun on the Internet.

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