Historical Landmarks

We live in an old neighborhood next to Dadaochen, old iancheng Circle and Zhongshan North Road. This area is filled with many historical buildings and cultures of great diversity. This area was once flourished with commerce and also the main traffic center for people migrating from south Taiwan to stay. Just by walking on the main streets or passing through small alleys, you find yourself entering a community of mixture of the old and the new, as well as full of unexpected surprises.

The red building of Rixin Primary School is almost a century old. The century-old red building, with the beautifully arched double hallways, was built with red bricks during the Japanese colonial period. While in the past the ordinary way was to tear down the old buildings and build a totally different new one, the red building had been decided to be preserved and renovated. For this reason, we start from our own school, the red building of Rixin, to do lots of research and interview. Further, we walk out of the campus to extend our reach to old buildings around this neighborhood, visiting historical buildings in Dadaocheng, Zhonshan north road, and other red buildings in Taipei. During each and every visit to these historical architectures, we try to find out more about them and understand the meaning of preserving and protecting them.
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There are two computer classrooms here at Rixin. Each of them is equipped with lots of computers with broadband access to internet. Sometimes when the computer classrooms are occupied and not available for individual usage, we could only use them during lunch breaks or on holidays for our project.
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1. Time pressure: During the execution of this project, we need to work together for incorporating information and photos, doing group discussions, working out the major theme and structures and so on. As a result, the time issue really intense because of the winter vacation when we couldnˇ¦t get together at that time. Also, we need to learn to make web pages from scratch. Even we started many interviews prior to participating this CyberFair, we still suffered from lack of time.

2. Learning about knowledge of historical buildings: In the beginning of listening to the introductions offered by architects and tour guides, we had difficulties understanding what they have said. Later, our teacher started to help us collecting information about historical buildings and guide us step by step to grow to understand more about the buildings. Gradually, with more visits and guided tours, we get to know and understand what they are all about.

3. Information collection: Before paying actual visits to these buildings, we are asked to collect information about the background of the buildings and other necessary information. Although searching for information from internet is quite easy, choosing proper information and eliminating the unnecessary one are more complicated. We learn from this process to determine what information is suitable for our needs.

4.Interview in action: Before each interview, we have to list out our questions and check with each other. We also need to learn necessary etiquettes and do rehearsals. But when it comes to the time of taking real action, we are all nervous. Different interview requires different real-time reactions. Itˇ¦s almost like taking tests. We also practice how to make appointments with others. Teacher helps us make lists of questions and think of the things we want to say beforehand. Making appointments over telephone is even more difficult than doing interviews! but we learn a lot and realize how much effort needed behind all the arrangements of these tours.

5. Compiling data after visits: After the visits, we have to go through the complicated parts of writing feedbacks and compiling contents of interviews. Writing feedbacks are difficult in the beginning. But later on, we gradually get some clues of how to compile our thoughts. One other difficulty is dictating from the content recorded from interviews. We learn to pay attention to recording quality and using backup recorders.

6. Integration of different themes: Because we are not just focusing on single historical building for introduction, discussions over themes becomes quite important. During the process, teacher shows us how to make tree diagrams, in order to distinguish different relations and connections of each theme.

7. Division of work: Because we are afraid of insufficient time for finishing every part of the project, also because of the winter vacation, we try hard to divide all the work for everybody to work at. This allows us to do the parts at home during vacation. Also, we arrange time for everyone to get online at the same time, so that we could discuss it together.

8. Website making techniques: It takes lots of techniques making web pages and animations. Through lots of mistakes, we finally get to speed up the typing speed, understand the theory of using different layers for making pictures, realize that the file names should all be English and etc.
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