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How did your activities
and research for this CyberFair Project support standards,
required coursework and curriculum standards?
1.Language art field:
While
facing large clutter of information, we need to keep a
record of what we read, identify the main idea and organize
our writing. Before the interview, we prepared questions. To
talk to kids in Eswatini on the video conference, we
practiced introducing ourselves in English.
2.Math field:
On
our school birthday, we did a survey. After we had our
questionnaires back, we made data ananlysis and used Excel
to present our results with charts and graphs.
3.Social Studies field:
We googled
Eswatini and learned a lot about its location, climate,
people, culture and so on. We also spent time working as
volunteers in our school and community.
4.Integrated activity field:
Doing our
research on volunteers abroad leads us to know more about
ourselves. We start to ask ourselves what we are capable of
and good at and we now give a real thought about our future.
5.Art and Humanity field:
Our
interviewee, Vivianna, is the co-founder of an art education
program in Eswatini. The goal of this program is to help
kids in Eswatini to ease anxiety, build confidence and also
trigger their potentials through painting. Due to this
project, we got to watch these kids’ paintings, and in
return, we made self-introduction videos showing them our
paintings. At our school fair, we also made posters to
introduce voluntary work and Taiwan Starlight Charity
Association, which was established later on by the founders
of the kid’s art education in Africa. The poster design
allowed us to put our art skills and creativity in use.
◎
In what ways did you act
as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair
project both on-line and in person.
Besides
interviewing Vivianna Lin and listening to her speeches on
voluntary work, we spent our school club time working on
this volunteer project. In order to let more people know
about voluntary work, we planned to put out posters at
school fair. To make these posters, we divided our members
into different groups. Some students searched for
information and photos; others were in charge of the poster
design. We wanted to introduce voluntary work, Eswatini and
Taiwan Starlight Charity Association through posters. At
school fair, we also gave out questionnnaires to find out
what people thought about volunteer work. More than that, we
invited people from the association to set up a stand at our
school fair. They did hand paintings and sold art handcrafts
at the stand. For spreading out the idea of voluntary work
on line, we made a website to share information about what
voluntary work is and what influence it can make to the
world.
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School
Assistance and Cooperation
The
school supported us a lot. We not only made the
website in the computer room the school offers but also
collected every material by using many hard equipment such
as digital cameras, recorders, and computers. There were
some technology problems, for example, image processing,
recording file editing, web search data, web page creation,
and questionnaire design, etc. The teachers also arranged
some courses to make us be in progress.
◎
How did your project
involve other members of your community as helpers and
volunteers?
First,
we want to thank the people who filled out the questionnaire
for us. And another big thank goes to our principal, who
provided us many little prizes for people who filled out the
questionnaire. Besides, people from Taiwan Starlight Charity
Association raised some money by doing hand paintings and
selling postcards and notebooks made by kids in Eswatini at
school fair. And all the profit went straightly to the money
for kids in Africa. What’s more, the division chief from
Youth Development Administration held a seminar at our
school. He gave us a more detailed introduction of their
volunteer abroad funding program and shared many great
touching stories from their program’s volunteers.
◎
What has been or will be the impact of
your project on your community?
What
we gain from this project is that we know more about
voluntary work and our diplomatic ally, Eswatini. On our
school birthday, people from Taiwan Starlight Charity
Association came all the way from Hsinchu to hold a charity
sale at our school fair. Our posters were hung at the stand.
What we did made people willing to come forward to learn
more about this charity association and Eswatini and thus
buy things at the stand. We think the charity sale, posters
and questionnaires do raise public awareness of voluntary
work.
◎
What information tools and technologies
did you use to complete your CyberFair project?
Our
school provide almost all of the tools we need for this
project, like computers, a digital camera, a video recorder,
a printer, a scanner, etc. Computers and the internet are
the most valuable tools for us because we used these tools
and authorized software to organize documents and films and
make the web page for our project. We also used smartphones
to make appointments with interviewees and other people. In
addition, the digital camera and the video recorder are
quite useful because they captured valuable moments of the
investigation.
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Intellectual Property
Rights
1.Photos and images used on this project webpage are
either taken or drawn by team members.
2.The content of the project is collected and written by
team members.
3.The use of someone else's work has been cited sources or
authorized.
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Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises
After
joining this project, we started to know more about Eswatini.
We used to picture Eswatini as a very poor country. However,
it surprised us to find out that actually people there have
tap water and they even take a shower two times a day. By
interviewing Vivianna Lin, we discover that there are still
many obstacles to overcome when it comes to carry out the
art education in children shelters in Africa. Problems are
like the difficulty of teaching kids at different ages and
lack of art supplies. Meanwhile, English proficiency is
another big challenge for volunteers themselves. We hope in
the near future, we may have a chance to visit Eswatini and
we can work as volunteers to help people and make this world
a better place to live in.
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