Project Overview
Competition Category
The category we chose to participate in for the competition is Historical Landmarks.
Description of Our Community
Our community, Changhua City, is located within Changhua County, which is the central part of Taiwan. The population of Changhua city is over 236,000. People are mostly involved with industry and commerce within an area of 65.69 square kilometers. Changhua City inherits great assets such as historic sites and abundant cultural resources from ancestors who started to pioneer the land in 1683. Owing to the recognition of the traditional convention, our community makes efforts to preserve natural and cultural resources to pass them down to next generation. Among those precious cultural resources, Changhua Roundhouse was set up for repairing and dispatching locomotives in 1922, and it is the last remaining in-service roundhouse in Southeast Asia. Moreover, there are two national treasure steam locomotives, CK124 and CK101, lodged in the Roundhouse. Our school is 1.2 kilometer away from Changhua Station and our sports field is nearby the railway, so we can see many trains pass by every day, including CK124. Hence, our school is closely connected with railway culture. Changhua Roundhouse is the pride of Changhua and the highlight of Taiwan’s railway history.
Our Project Topic
Explore globally, preserve locally: Roundhouse in Changhua
Summary of Our Project
This project aims to introduce Changhua Roundhouse, which is located nearby Changhua Station, belonging to Changhua Rolling Stock Branch of Taiwan Railway Administration. Changhua Station is located in the middle of western Taiwan with having heavy passenger capacity and traffic flow. Changhua Roundhouse was set up for locomotive repair, dispatching, maintenance, and supplement when the coast railway line between Chunan and Changhua was completed in 1922.
As the transportation hub, Changhua Roundhouse is now the ninety-year-old building. It was once faced with being dismantled, but fortunately some local leaders and Babuza Railway Culture and History Working office strived to keep this building. Moreover, it was kept as County designate in 2000, and it is actually the last remaining in-service roundhouse in Southeast Asia.
Participating in this project, we visited Changhua Roundhouse and interviewed train engineer and some railway professionals, took part in art competitions and activities held by Changhua County Cultural Affairs Bureau. We also attended narrator training camp and held activities such as challenge games and to present Changhua Roundhouse in our school. We hope to show the unique heritage through exploring its glorious history and grand monument.
Problems We Had To Overcome
Make use of the break time and vacations
Our team consists of 8 members coming from different classes and joining various extra-curricular activities. It was really hard for us to proceed with group discussion, so we made good use of our break time, summer and winter vacations. In addition, we discussed online and made records of our process and reflections on our discussion board as well.
Changhua Cool-Bow is made up of 8 members.
Ask for help from relatives and teachers
Use internet
Changhua Roundhouse is administrated by Changhua Rolling Stock Branch of Taiwan Railways Administration, MOTC. When the research topic was decided, we did not have any idea of how to start, where to get useful information and how to contact the pros. But thanks to the internet and the help from some teachers and relatives, we finally contacted Chin-Chu Wong, the legislator, Wen-Rai Chen, employee of Changhua Rolling Stock Branch and Chung-Hong Ma, the President of Babuza Railway Culture and History Working office.
Thanks for all your help!
Interviews drilling
For a better understanding of the history and of Changhua Roundhouse, we planned to interview Chin-Chu Wong, who is our County Ex-Magistrate and has attempted to preserve the monument, Chung-Hong Ma, the President of Babuza Railway Culture and History Working office, and Fu-Chin Lai, Junior train inspector of Changhua Rolling Stock Branch. However, we were all inexperienced in interviewing. To solve this problem, we had lots of interview drills to practice posing questions and try to work out any possible answers.
Made outline of interview and imitated interview
We make a draft in advance.
We held many activities to present Changhua Roundhouse for students, teachers and our community at Changhua Roundhouse and at school. However, we were not familiar with the process, so we invited Mr. Ma, the President of Babuza Railway Culture and History Working office as the instructor to help us. We also made signboards in advance, practiced our presentations and revised the scripts over and over again. In addition, our principal gave us lots of useful advice to make us well-prepared.
Present with charts and pictures
We attempted to provide the information about Changhua Roundhouse on the website to make it well know to people. However, it is hard to present the monument and activities only by words. Therefore, we adopted lots of charts and pictures. For instance, we painted the route information and comic figures and then had them scanned and edited with software. Moreover, we used lots of photos to introduce our activities, trying to let readers know more about our project.
Scanned the figures we painted and edited with the software.
Presented the Historical Landmark and activity process with charts and pictures.
Our Project Sound Bite
Participating in 2013 International Schools Cyberfair project, it took us half a year to look for the teammates, decide the topic, design the research, contact the interviewees, learn how to narrate and learn to use the software. We were very lucky to get helps from many community residents and got to know more about our hometown. We also got to know that we have the last remain-at-work roundhouse in Southeast Asia, this meant more than well-known food and famous sight-seeing spots. We were so moved while seeing this County designate heritage which has been worked for ninety years that we would like to introduce it to more people.
By doing this project, we could have the field visits inside the roundhouse with the assistance of Changhua Rolling Stock Branch of Taiwan Railway Administration, learn how to be narrators, interview those highly-achieving persons and make posters and cards on our own. These were all the special experiences that we’ve never had. It’s hard to describe how amazing it was to hear the whistles of the steam locomotives and to watch it work slowly but smoothly. And this is the very reason why we want to bring this treasure in our hometown to the world.
This project is designed in accordance with Grade 1-9 Curriculum administered by the Ministry of Education.
The project targets the student-based Nine-year Integrated Curriculum, which emphasizes students' soft power such as designing, organizing and presenting projects. Plus, making use of information tools and technology, being willing to express themselves, sharing feelings and communicating with teammates are also essential to the process. This project allowed us to learn to be more open-minded and care more about our community.
Language Learning
We made good use of language skills while doing this project. In order to enhance the reading and writing skills, we had to read and organize large amount of materials, and to integrate the charts and pictures in scripts before narrating in Changhua Roundhouse. In order to present roundhouse well, we practiced repeatedly depicting and posing questions to each others in turns and tried to introduce the history and features of roundhouse as clearly as we can. Besides, we shared our feelings and thoughts and made records of all the project process. Every task really made our language ability much better.
Social Studies
Social Studies aim to discover the multi relationships among human and society, and culture and environment. Changhua Roundhouse, our research topic, is one of the most significant monuments in the community. Plus, it is still closely connected to people's lives here because it is exactly where locomotives are maintained and dispatched. This project provided us the opportunities to arrange field visits to know the history and features of roundhouse, to interview some key persons who have worked a lot for the preservation of the monument, and to participat some remarkable activities regarding the steam locomotives held by the community. This project actually have got us to know more and care more about our hometown.
Arts and Humanities
Art is a part of life and ways of living. For working on the project, we visited Changhua Roundhouse, the County-designated historic monument, to explore the beautiful place for locomotive maintenance. Moreover, we not only signed up for the art competition regarding the subject of “Changhua Roundhouse” but won great rewards fortunately. After the competition, we even made cards and posters by ourselves to appreciate the sponsors of the competition. All the handmade cards and posters were unique and in limited quantity.
Integrative Activities
The process of completing the project makes us learn how to cooperate with our teammates and accomplish all the tasks together. Despite the disagreements among us, we still worked together and found solutions to our problems. We learned as well that we have to put aside our personal opinions and take suggestions from teammates. Working on the project, we learned to be more responsible for ourselves and become much more self-confident while facing difficulties.
Key issues: Information Technology Education
The internet and computer software were very important during the group discussion, such as finding the most relevant information with different search engines, making project reports and interpretive signs with software and transforming handmade paintings into pictures, etc. Experience mentioned previously not only improved our abilities but taught us how important and useful the information technology is.
Source: Changhua Cool-Bow
