 Project Presentation/Research Project Overview |
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| ■ Category:7. Environmental Awareness |
■ Description of "Our Community"
| Our home and school are located on the down-stream of Shuang-Xi River. The riverbank is like our back yard, but the back yard wasn’t beautiful at all. There were tall grass, mud and vegetable farm everywhere. Garbage was floating on the surface of river, and the odor was scary as well. However, due to the arising environmental awareness these years, the trees become much greener, and the flowers are prosperous, too. It becomes a wonderland of animals, where they can play, eat and breed. Besides, people put more emphasis on entertainments activities, so there are basketball courts, badminton courts, skating rink and exercising equipment along the riverside. Cycling paths are convenient, too. We can exercise, chat and get familiar with our community here. What’s more, in addition to astronomical museum and National Taiwan Science Education Center, there will be a Children’s Recreation Center soon nearby. |
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■ Summary of Our Project ：
| In order to protect our environment, we are used to be educated not to litter around, pour out waste water, or break off twigs or flowers. However, instead of “Not to”, maybe we can ask ourselves more questions: Can we “do more” for our environment without hurting it? Can we have more thoughts and action to our environment?
After seeing the environmental art exhibition held by fourth grade students in Wen-Chang Elementary students, the answer to the question is YES. It will be positive YES only to the kids, but also to every person in this community. Through the chance of participating Global School Net, on one hand, we interview these cute artists’ progress of idea thinking, making, displaying, results, and reflection; on the other hand, we can keep thinking what else could we do for Shuang-Xi River bank to make it cleaner. We wish that this action can attract more people walking into the riverbank, and get people together to protect our environment. |
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■ Our Research Project Environment:
| Teachers at school provided us with guidance in terms of software and data collection. Our parents also fully supported us throughout this entire project, providing assistance in any way possible through their time and in other ways such as photography, interviews, etc. For our network environment, the school provided us with computers on a Local Area Network for the entire project website construction process combined with tablet PCs and wireless internet access. In addition, we had access to a full range of facilities such as printers and scanners. Initially, we stored all the information we researched onto USB drives and set up a website on a single PC. The website was stored at school to reduce the risk of data being corrupted or drive failure. Then, a parent recommended that we make another backup on Google’s cloud drive, as it is safer to have two backups. |
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■ Challenges We Encountered and Overcame
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Time |
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We only came up with the idea of participating in the Cyberfair on November 16th, after the school anniversary celebration. We began asking teachers for their opinions and inviting classmates. The team of participants was not confirmed until December 1st, so we started making our website a lot later than other contestants. We made the most out of our spare time during lunch breaks, afterschool hours, weekends, and winter vacation so that this project did not interfere with our academic performance. Because everyone had to attend cram school in addition to school, we overcame this challenge by planning and holding discussions during lunch breaks on school days, when everyone was present. We distributed tasks evenly so our partners could claim them as their own. All our classmates were very responsible and turned in their part of the work on time. In addition, the cloud drive was a fantastic location to store and share information. Another useful item was the Line smart app on our parents’ smart phones. Our teacher used Line to communicate with our parents while keeping a close tab on our progress so that we were able to complete this website in the shortest time possible. |
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Information |
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We only thought of creating a website that introduced and recorded the reasons behind this event after we visited the River Cruise Journal Mobile Environmental Art Installation, so it was challenging to trace the origin, process, and result of this event after it took place. We had to interview many people to get the information and photographs we needed. Fortunately, we were able to draft the website structure through our teacher’s guidance, clarify what data we needed, who we needed to interview, and who we could seek assistance from. We recorded each task and completed them one-by-one. We would really like to thank each and every classmate, village chief, teacher, and staff member of the National Taiwan Science Education Center who provided us with information. As soon as they heard that we wanted to make a website related to a local environmental topic, they were more than happy to help us. Through everyone’s help and support, we were able to collect the valuable information we wanted. |
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Technology |
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We used a variety of software this time, including: PowerDirector (for video editing), PhotoImpact X3 and Photoshop (for images), Dreamweaver (to build the website), and Microsoft Office (to write content). We are also very grateful for the hardware and facilities provided by the school and parents so that we had the chance to record our entire research process with a digital camcorder and digital camera. However, as we were just learning to use some of the software and hardware, we ran into some issues during operation. Fortunately, we had our teacher, Mr. Xu, and Mr. Hong to help us. We learned a lot of new technology and used this knowledge to make a website. |
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Progress |
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Whether it was during school days or winter vacation, everyone had afterschool cram school classes to go to, so it was really difficult to get together. In order to overcome this challenge, we used a cloud drive to store, access, and share information. Another useful tool was the Line app on our parents’ smart phones. Our teacher used Line to communicate with our parents while keeping a close tab on our progress. This time, we also learned to make the most out of our respective expertise. The two girls in our group were good and keeping records and typed fast, so they were in charge of typing. Also, as the girls happened to have the right software at home, the video editing was allocated to them. We were in charge of selecting video clips. Sometimes we wanted to goof-off too, but as soon as we got distracted, our parents and teacher would ask us how we were doing. So we had to keep working hard just thinking about how we could relax once we were done! |
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Experience |
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Before creating the Cyberfair website, none of us had any website construction experience so our teacher had to teach us step-by-step. Sometimes when I encountered a problem I would not know what to do and I would just stare at the computer, but at school my teacher and classmates would help me. Luckily, our dads are good at using computers too, so when we encountered problems at home, our dads would rescue us. After this experience of creating a website, we will be happy to teach younger students if we need to the next time they have to create a website for a competition. In order to demonstrate our knowledge, we have to accumulate experience now so that we can use it at any time in the future. |
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■ Reflections and Report：
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Data Collection： |
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When choosing a theme at the beginning, we had a hard time deciding between Local Specialties and Attractions and Local Environmental Issues. We were glad that our teacher led us on a journey to clarify what we wanted. In the end, we chose the theme: Local Environmental Issues. We began forming a team and making this website after we saw the environmental art pieces by the fourth grade students. We held a discussion and determined that we wanted to interview the ten groups of students from the fourth grade, the two fourth grade class teachers, Mr. Yang Zhi-fu who was the artist in charge of the project, teachers from the National Taiwan Science Education Center who helped with the project, village chiefs, and adults and kids who have seen the pieces. In addition to interviews, we also asked the two fourth grade class teachers to provide us with event photographs and student homework. We also asked teachers from the National Taiwan Science Education Center to provide us with photographic data.
Our entire team was present during each interview, and we would prepare the questions we wanted to ask before the interview. Since it took us a long time to write down notes, we recorded the interviews and typed them as transcripts at school when we had time. I often encountered words and phrases I did not know while making transcripts, so I would like to thank my parents and teacher for reviewing my transcripts.
We felt that the hardest part of collecting data was organizing student journals. We had to read each person’s journal, categorize them, and decide whose to use. This was really a difficult process!
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Web Design： |
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The two girls on our team were good at drawing and they loved to draw, so they thought that design would be a simple job at the beginning. Later on, they were surprised that they needed to create animations and manipulate images on the computer! Fortunately, with our teacher’s instruction, we put the skills we learned in computer class to use while the teacher also taught us new skills. Though it was somewhat difficult at first, we got the hang of it after a few times. Also, as we worked on the project during winter vacation too, we were able to ask our parents for guidance during this time. Our project was not perfect, but we completed each piece with all our hearts. We gained more confidence with each piece we finished. |
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Video and Photography： |
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Throughout this process where we created the competition website, Xu Yu-xiang was mainly in charge of photography, while Hong Zhen-ling was responsible for capturing interviews on video. Both knew how to operate the equipment already, but each asked his father to teach him how to use the equipment again for this project. During the actual interviews, Mr. Xu and Mr. Hong helped on the sidelines too, as each interview was a valuable one-time event that would not be repeated. To ensure that there were clear, usable photographs of each event, our parents and teacher took photographs too.
When selecting photographs, our teacher asked us to choose from the ones Xu Yu-xiang took first. We only chose the photographs that our parents or teacher took if his were blurry or not well composed. Later on, we learned to immediately confirm if the photographs were clear after we took them and retake blurry ones so we did not have to rely on teachers or our parents.
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Data Organization： |
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Because our team had 4 fourth graders, 1 fifth grader, and 1 sixth grader, it was a little challenging for all team members to communicate. Fortunately, as all of us boys are on the table tennis team, we used breaks between games to talk about Cyberfair matters. Especially when our parents picked us up in the afternoon after practice was finished, this was a great time for students, teachers, and parents to communicate and talk. We would talk to each other while contacting the Hong family through Line. Wasn’t that fantastic?
We had to interview and visit a lot of people, including ten groups of students from the fourth grade, the two fourth grade class teachers, Mr. Yang Zhi-fu who was the artist in charge of the project, teachers from the National Taiwan Science Education Center who helped with the project, village chiefs, adults and kids who have seen the pieces, the principal, the director and more, Lin Yan-qi’s mother helped us call and arrange times for our interviews. We six were responsible for the topics and questions during the interviews. We would like to thank our teacher for all the suggestions during this process.
We were all very shy when we visited for the first time, then we became increasingly more comfortable. What left us with the deepest impression was when we visited the Director-General of the National Taiwan Science Education Center. His office was enormous, and he gave us drinks and small gifts. When we interviewed the chief of Dexing Village, he got all choked up when talking about the source of the Shuangxi River. We learned that his family home was located at the source of the Shuangxi River. He used to work at the Water Resources and Sewerage Bureau when he was younger, so he has deep emotional ties to every river in Taipei City.
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