 Project Presentation/Project Information |
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■ How does our research project fit into the Grade 1-9 Curriculum and the school-based curriculum?
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Language Arts /Mandarin: |
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Through this event, we utilized all the skills we learned in Mandarin class at school. During discussions, we had to voice our opinions completely so that our teammates understood, we had to pay attention while others were speaking, and we had to take notes. When interviewing people, we had to think of questions beforehand, speak at an appropriate volume, listen carefully to the person being interview’s response, and organize it into a typed document. While searching for information about Shuangxi River, we couldn’t just copy it all. We had to learn to express it in our own words. |
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Social Studies: |
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Through this Cyberfair experience, we have come to a deeper understanding of the relationship between the land, environment and people, and the issues that people and rivers face. During the research process, we worked hard to observe the environment along Shuangxi River from mid to downstream. Early on, people drank from this river and utilized it for transportation and irrigation. For a period in the past, this river was seriously polluted because people did not take good care of it. Now that residents are more environmentally conscious, people are cherishing it more and thus the environment we live in is becoming increasingly cleaner and better.
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Science and Technology: |
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We have invested a lot and reaped significant results in terms of developing our skills to observe and convey matters. This means that through the guidance of our teachers, we discovered the issues, which Shuangxi River faces and discussed what we could do for Shuangxi River with our classmates. The fourth grade student touched residents with the concept of environmental action art, creating art installations with recyclable materials. We students were moved and we formed a team to protect the Shuangxi River, bringing teachers and parents together to gather information through the phone, books, internet, and media to create a website. Through the power of the internet, we want to convey to the world that we should protect the environment, cherish resources, respect the knowledge and attitude of life, and embrace the local ecology and technology with passion. |
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Arts and Humanities: |
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Our website, Fun River Adventure, mainly recorded the process of how the fourth graders at our school carried out their river adventure journal. Though we did not create the pieces together, we did appreciate their work together and wrote a joint recommendation report. We suggested that the school make sure to find locations for these pieces on campus so that each student at school can understand the relationship between art and life, enhancing how students perceive their environment through environmental art activities. In addition, we also recommended that the school maintain these pieces regularly and make sure to recycle them if they are damaged beyond repair in the future in order to respect these artistic creations and learn to implement art in everyday life.
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Mathematics: |
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When we first started building the website, we thought that there would be a lot of time since we had two months to make it. However, we found out that we were actually a little short on time after coming up with the structure chart and allocating time and jobs. During actual operations, many accidents emerged and took up a lot of time. From this process, we learned time allocation, estimation, utilization, and workload distribution. We tried to allocate the time actually available in our everyday life ourselves and adapt to and resolve issues. In addition, the interview process also nurtured our ability to organize and store messages between our team and us. |
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■ Which information technologies were utilized to complete our research project?
We used a variety of information technologies to create the Fun River Adventure website, such as digital cameras, voice recorders, scanners, mobile phones, computers, tablet computers, website building software, cloud storage, USB drives, and Line. Without our mobile phones, tablets and Line, we would not have been able to communicate instantaneously and effectively or deal with issues right away. Without digital cameras, we would not have been able to take photographs or video. Without computers and website building software, we would not have been able to create the website. Without USB drives and cloud storage, we would not have been able to share information, especially as cloud storage allowed us to store website information securely. All of these tools were indispensable to us during this process.
The fourth grade students utilized recyclable materials to create large art installations under the direction of their teachers. They were placed on the Shuangxi River bank and a presentation was given to visitors and residents on November 16th, conveying a message of environmental protection and river conservation. This moved us and we invited our good friends from the fourth grade to create this website with us so that we could disseminate concepts of environmental protection and river conservation through the vast online world. Our goal is to make sure that everyone who browses our website understands that everyone is responsible for environmental conservation, and that everyone can be involved.
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■What kind of methods is you use to play the ambassador role online or through individual and group contact?
We came up with the idea of recording the process of these art installations through a website only after we saw this work by the fourth grade students at the schools’ anniversary celebration. After interviews, we found out that it was National Taiwan Science Education Center, which was looking for a school to conduct water environmental education. Because our school was the closest to the National Taiwan Science Education Center, situated right next to Shuangxi River, and the two fourth grade class teachers have always integrated biodiversity and environmental education issues into their curricula over the years, the fourth grade students had the opportunity to take part in this activity. |
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■What influence or impact did the research project have on us?
| There is a lot of data and pictures needed during the website building process, which we had to obtain methodically though interviews and requesting teachers for their support. Because there is a large amount of information, we had to delete, compile, and organize information after we obtained it before putting it on the website. As we were on a very tight time schedule and younger students in the fourth grade needed to be taught step by step how to operate IT equipment, we asked that the computer teachers at school teach the younger students these computer skills. As we also needed to improve our film editing abilities, we looked to our parents for some assistance. This was how our work team grew in size. In addition to six students, this also included all four of our families and computer teachers. We experienced the power of a team. With our families and teachers’ support, we felt much more secure in our tasks. |
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■How did other members of your locality assist or take part in your research project?
| We only came up with the idea of creating this website on November 16th, after we toured the younger students’ environmental art exhibition. As the entire event had concluded, the only way to research the origin and process of the event was through interviews, reviews of student work, and looking through photographs that the teachers took. We are very grateful for all the teachers, students, staff at the National Taiwan Science Education Center, and two village chiefs of the school district for their contributions to the project. We were only able to collect so much information in such a limited time because of their help. We would also like to thank the principal of our school for her support. |
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■Did you respect intellectual property rights and use references?
Every part of the information on this website came from our own interviews, or our own selections from the student data and photos that the teachers gave us. During the interviews, we informed all those being interviewed that the content of the interview would be placed on the website and asked for their consent. We also informed classmates who provided pieces and teachers providing photographs or video that the content would be placed on a website and asked for their consent. When utilizing information from the National Taiwan Science Education Center, we asked the school to send out an authorization agreement for the center to sign.
We would like to thank everyone who provided us with informational photos during website production. However, what made us feel most accomplished was using photographs we took ourselves, patterns we drew ourselves, and creating graphic design by ourselves on the computer. Through our unique project, we were able to express our views on environmental protection and river conservation in a way, which most closely conveys our ideas. |
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■ Discoveries, lessons and surprises
- There is an advertising slogan that goes, “Technology originates from the human heart.” Our parents used to never let us use mobile phones or computers much because they were afraid we would spend too much time on the phone and waste money, or play video games for too long and neglect our schoolwork while ruining our vision. However, we had to spend a lot of time on the computer in order to create a website this time, and we often had to ask our parents to read and send messages on Line. However, as we had the clear goal of protecting the environment, our parents provided us with full support and were very lenient with our technology use. Thus, we should properly utilize modern technology to make the environment we live in a better place.
- Modern technology allows us to collect a lot of information in a short period, but at the beginning we did not know how to manage our files and we saved them everywhere. The result was that when we looked for something, we knew we had it but could not actually locate it. We are grateful to our teachers for teaching us the concept of layered file storage. We learned how to manage electronic information as well as establish the concept of backing up data, that a file should be stored in at least three locations: the computer, external, and cloud storage.
- To be honest, while collecting information, I really envied how the fourth grade students were able to take part in environmental art creations. I also admired their pieces. As our website building task was nearly completed, we were all very proud that we were able to build an entire website from scratch.
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