School: JauNan elelmentary school of Miaoli
    Miaoli, Taiwan, R.O.C

9 students, ages 11 to 13 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 13, 2003. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): never

Classes and Teachers: Ms.Chang Yueh-Ying, Ms.Huang Hsiu-Lin, Ms.Tsai Ping-Yun.

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.jnes.mlc.edu.tw/~silk2

1. Description of Our Community

Miaoli, our hometown, was originally a residential area for aboriginal tribe named Pingpu Jiasih. Chinese people came here in the Han Dynasty. During the Ching Dynasty, it changed its name Miaoli that lasts until now. Known as its mountainous landscape, Miaoli is also named the city of mountains. Most people in our hometown make a living as farmers. Through thrift, diligence and hard work for years, farmers have developed many special agricultural products like strawberries in Dahu, seasonal fruits in Jhuolan, pears in Sanwan and red dates in Gongguan. Compared to the hectic life style in cities, Miaoli is definitely a good place for relaxing your mind.

2. Summary of Our Project

Almost everybody in Taiwan knows the name of Miaoli, Dahu by its local products – strawberries. But early on, Dahu was also a very important place to produce high quality of silk and other silk products in Taiwan. As it is a labor-intensive industry, sericulture, the technology of producing silk products, has had to face the fate of recession. While this time, in Shitan, we were lucky to have found the only existing sericulture farm and therefore started our journey to the world of silkworms.

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:more than 50%

B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:2-3

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:1

E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):

In our school, there are 2 computer rooms each with 40 sets of personal computers. We can access the Internet through the TANET, by Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) with 1536K uploading speed and 384K downloading speed. Our members use computers to access networks by either 56 dial-up modem link through various network providers or wide band services (ADSL) at home.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

During the process of research, we have paid at least 25 visits to the farm. Every single trip took us about 1 hour so most of us had motion sickness from the ride to the farm. Besides, the safety of transportation is always the main concern for the teachers.

Even most of the time, we are tied up to the busy timetable of school, we still insisted on keeping our schedule and tried our very best to get it finished. Because we know, silkworms would never wait.

With limited resources from school, we had to find every possible alternative to carry out our project. For example, we used a lot of photographs to illustrate the process of raising silkworms. In order to get better quality of pictures and connection speed, we had spent quite some time modifying the photos. Besides, we also surfed the Internet to find websites or went to bookshops for free “downloading” of data we needed. We have tried hard to break the limitation and make our project even better.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Most parents and teachers have a stereotyped view about learning, that is, learning can be only confined in the traditional classroom. This time, we stepped out of our classroom and made some variations in the way of learning for students. Meanwhile, we were also inspired by the change and progress the children have made in these few months. We surely learn things from each other. We hope the birth of this project would help more and more people find the beauty of our hometown.

6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?

Traditionally, education can only take place at schools. While this time, the resources of our community and parental supporting have played an important role on the research. We believe that diversified curriculums and more real time experience would motivate and stimulate students’ will of learning. The mission of education is to enhance students’ ability to think, to ask questions and to solve problems by themselves.

Acquiring basic knowledge of computer is one of the benefits we’ve got throughout the research. The trend of using computers has gone international. It’s urgent for everyone to learn how to combine the skills and knowledge of using this modern technology in our daily lives.

In addition to increasing our knowledge in science, we have learned skills like how to organize a team to work on a project, communicate with people and also the importance of cooperation. Learning is not just an individual activity for acquiring and storing knowledge. It’s beneficial to share what we have learned through interaction. Besides, it’s essential for teachers to provide students with an environment of abundant living materials. The result of our research would be used as a supplemental material for science and local social studies subjects.

Our team motto is: cooperative learning, team work, idea sharing and act it out. Through brainstorming, we finally made it to achieve our goal.

1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your CyberFair project?

1.Telephone:To keep contact with people for interview and to arrange schedule. It’s also used for communication between members. 2.Digital camera system:To shoot the process of research and to pick up figures from books. 3.Computer & the Internet:For collecting or uploading data and to edit photos and written journals. 4.Computer software:Microsoft Office seriesUlead 5.PhotoImpact 7.0Macromedia Dreamweaver 4Macromedia Flash 5 6.Tape recorder:For interview

2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair project both on-line and in person.

Before we started the project, we called Mr. Tu, the owner of the sericulture farm and asked for his agreement. Then after discussion, we decided our outline of the project. During the research, Mr. Tu also introduced some local researchers at the reformation center to provide us with a lot of relevant data of silkworms and mulberry trees.

On all of our visits to the farm, Mr. and Mrs. Tu always gave us as many chances as they could to experience the raising process by ourselves. Before every interview, we had to gather data and study for asking questions. Bu written journals and recorded interview, we can collect data in a quite complete way. We also made friends from all over the country. Through the discussion board on our website, we were able to exchange our opinions about our web page.

3) What has been the impact of your project on your community?

By doing this project, we found that the interaction between schools and our community has greatly increased. Through the understanding of our hometown, we’re more bonded to our lovely hometown. What we are trying to do is to promote our local specialties by introducing them through the Internet and raise our publicity as much as we can.

4) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?

Mr. and Mrs. Tu have being very kind and friendly whenever we visited their farm. They also provided us with all the information we needed for this project. Not only did we acquire the knowledge about silkworms, but also their strong personalities of perseverance and diligence taught us a very precious lesson in life. Their hard working spirits have been truly impressive to every one of us in this project.

We like to thank Mr. Liu Tseng-Cheng, the researcher at the reformation center, voluntarily provided us with all the data and references and allowed us to take a trip to the sericulture museum which is not officially open yet during our research. We also want to show our sincere appreciation for helping us in every possible way to Mr.Wu Deng-Chen, Mr. Yu His-Chin, and Mr. Su Hsin-Yuen, the people who work at the administration department of the reformation center.

The uses of silkworms and mulberry trees are known as silk producer and food. But few people know that they are also widely used as medicine for treating certain diseases. We have consulted a few local doctors who know well about the effectiveness of using silkworms and mulberry leaves as medicine.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

During these months, we have learned a lot through careful observation on the silkworm’s life cycle and the physiological characteristics. Some of our team members even dare not to touch the little worms at the beginning. Now they have become the most caring baby-sitters and they all agree that silkworms are the most beloved animals in the world. Our purpose of research is to preserve our local specialties and culture and to inspire students’ interest in finding the beauty of our hometown as well. Through this off-campus activity, we hope students would expand their learning experience outside their classroom. Moreover, we expect our students to learn how to cherish life and give them more respect. As the role of teachers, we found the research has also helped us to ignite more new ideas and to motivate our teaching passion.