1.Category

Local Attractions (Natural and Man-Made)

2.Description of our community

Taipei Municipal Jiantan Elementary School is located in Taipei City, Shilin District, where vital functionality is found. It is near Yangmingshan National Park and the Pingding Ancient channel under the jurisdiction is quite exceptional, which was named as “Cultural Landscape” in 2009 and became the important cultural asset of Taipei City.

Ancient channel is located in Pingdeng Village, Shilling District of Taipei City. It was developed in the Qing Dynasty and completed during Japanese Ruling Period. Today it covers three channels, namely the Ancient Channel, New Channel and Dengfong Channel. The early purpose mainly involved with reclamation and water supply and is not the key source for irrigation and livelihood water supply. The water quality of Ancient channel is clear and currently still preserves the original look built from the Qing Dynasty. The local residents and Chi-Sing Irrigation Association renovated the channel through nature-friendly techniques to preserve the rich ecology resource of this area and attract tourists to visit. The three channel routes in a total length of 14 kilometers is further designed into a hiking trail so that the ancient channel becomes the only “ecology” survived in the city.

We expect to explore into the channel building techniques in-depth from the research and acquaint more people with the channel, and cherish the local water resource.

3. Research Project Overview 

The project research objectives are divided into five objectives, namely:

(1) Discuss the development history of Pingding Ancient Channel

Acquaint students with the development process of channel and find out the relationship between the channel road and local industries.

(2) Visit Pingding ancient channel maintenance activity

Lead students to visit channel and acquaint with the different aqueduct techniques in order to understand the importance of maintaining water resource.

(3) Introduce the main maintenance organization of ancient channel – Chi-Sing Irrigation Association

Discuss which maintenance and promotion works does the Irrigation Association involve and acquaint with the various irrigation facilities.

(4) Channel acquaintance and advocacy

Design questionnaire and conduct promotion to bring attention from people on the development history of channels and learn to care for local resources.

We expect to acquaint with the three Pingding channel roads in-depth through the assistance from Irrigation Association and local residents, so that students will leave knowledge form text and take in-field survey to understand the importance of channel in Taiwan’s irrigation history.

(5) Combine local tourism promotion

Promoting in themes on Pingding ancient channel and extend outward to acquaint with local industries before singing a series of journeys that will allow more people to take short trips and understand the fun brought by channel visit more easily.

4. Internet Environment

      There is one computer room in the school equipped with all facilities for communication and contact. Recently the computer room has been added with new computer equipment. For computer teaching, students were instructed to utlize the different functions in Google interface, i.e. establishing website related information, interview and production materials on the Google Sites. With regards to cloud storage, students stored relevant files on website production so that teachers and students could still control the progress of production off the assembly time so that feedback can be given in bilateral direction. With regards to questionnaires survey, the use of Google form allows all questionnaire data to be quickly and completely sorted out. The animation production is applied with Flash to help students learn to make animation so the students could try different software in versatility and complete this project.

5.Problems encountered and overcome

(1) Member could not coordinate in schedule

The composition of members consists of 5th graders and 6 graders. Moreover the teachers have different position in school. Hence it has not been easy to find out the time which everyone is available. Moreover, the channel survey takes place in the mountain while most itineraries require the agreement and assistance form Chi-Sing Irrigation Association.

The interview with local residents and tourism industries also require pre-communication and coordination. Hence we could only use lunch break to discuss or produce in the process of website production, or use Wednesday afternoon for teachers to lead the students in completing the various activities. We worked hard to come up with time to complete each activity with our best effort.

(2) Data collection and sorting

There is not much data related to Pingding ancient channel and with few complete reporting of introduction, we needed to find books related to channel in order to complete the data or consult with Chi-Sing Irrigation Association. Moreover the production process requires many in-field surveys, interview voice recording and document records, hence how to sort these primary data and secondary data in complete presentation were also issue which we needed to overcome for the production.

(3) Interview method and techniques

We needed to ask many people questions for this activity and learning how to conduct interview was something we needed to overcome. Moreover the local residents mostly speak in Taiwanese dialect and hence the listening and conversation skills between mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese dialect was more important for the success of interview. To overcome the problems of language barrier, we recorded each interview and summaries the key points afterwards in order to record these summaries.

(4) Computer technology breakthrough

Many places of the website production requires the use of software. The images on the website require drawing software for processing while animation requires Flash learning for production. Half of the members consist of 5th graders who had content to relevant content for the first time and hence will require more time to learn how to use the software.

6.Learning  Experience

This Pingding Ancient channel survey allowed us to take six visit in few times of assembly. Although we needed to record massive content within short period of time for each visit, we have acquired different learning experience. Meanwhile we also learned how to design questions and sort the interview content in addition to using Google Form for producing questionnaire in the promotion activity. Moreover we learned to quantify the questionnaire, write and conduct questionnaire statistics, introducing everyone on unfamiliar things. These tasks were difficult and challenging, however completing all these gave us a sense of achievement and we felt that we have made big progress.

For website design, we have learned to draw ourselves with Flash and seeing our own drawing moving was very inconceivable as if we have created a new thing. Learning the application of different software helps me familiarize with computer even more. Although we had to use our lunch break, Wednesday afternoons, holiday and some winter vacation, we thought it was quite worth it because we could interact with the nature through this activity experiencing many things we could not think of before and such activity is quite meaningful. We hope that we will have the opportunity to re-participate in the activity of Cyberfair.