School: SJK(C) Choong Wen
    Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

11 students, ages 11,12 years old worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 21, 2003. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2001,2002

Classes and Teachers: Ms Chong Yin Wan, Ms Ng Lee Huang, 9 students from 6S class, 1 student from 6R class and 1 student from 6C class

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.choongwen.edu.my

1. Description of Our Community

Our community refers to our school community which is included Board of Governors, Parents and Teachers Association, Alumni Society, local organization, shop, associations and society. We have 2102 students, 42 classrooms and 2 computer labs. Our school is nearby a residential area and some shops. Most of the students are not from a rich family background, but their parents are very enthusiastic in helping the schools development by donating money to school and organizing charity activities. All the members of our community are very warm-hearted to help our school become better and better.

2. Summary of Our Project

Our core project is under Business and Community Organizations category. The community organizations are the Board of Governor, Parents and Teachers Association, Alumni Society, local organizations, associations, society, Headmaster, teachers and students. Firstly, the project introduce a short history about how was our school being developed. We would like to introduce how the local community helps to build our school, the charity activity – Top Ten Singing Charity Concert that they had organized to collect donation. We also include the progress of the new building construction. Through this project, we would like to let more people in the world know more about how are our local community taking care of us. We started our project by end of Jan. With the helps from our coaches, we performed many researches on the title using various sources, which includes online searching on the Internet, newspapers, magazines, books and others. In order to have a better understanding the progress and process of the activity, we had an interview session with YB. Senator Datuk Tengku Adnan bin Tengku Mansor who is the MINISTER IN THE PRIME MINISTER'S DEPARTMENT; YB Dato’ Dr Fu Ah Kiow, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry; Chairman of the Raising Fund Committee – Mr. Tan Men Choon, Top Ten Singing Charity Concert Coordinator- Miss Sim Siaw Cheng, headmaster, teachers and students.

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:21-50%

B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:more than 6

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:4-6

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

The school has two computer lab consists of 104 networked PCs and 2 servers, a joint effort between the school and TMEduTech (M) Sdn Bhd, a local company which helps the school to implement the Smart School concepts strongly encouraged by the government. TMEduTech stationed the computer teachers and managed the lab for our school. As the IT coordinator for the school, they help the school to obtain the broadband internet access service from TMNET. Our dedicated computer teachers, headmaster, PTA (Parent Teacher Association) members have always encouraged us to participate in any collaborative projects. Our computer lessons emphasizes on project-based activities, as they believes in the teaching, which leads to help the students to earn a life-long learning skills – learn to learn and learn to think.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

Below are the list of problems that we overcame:-

Language – our school is Chinese primary school with Mandarin as the main communication language. We faced language difficulties when conducting interview with the education officers. Usually, we used to write in Mandarin and our computer teachers helps use to translate to English. We used many methods to improve our English. We flip through the dictionary and the Chinese to English software to write our content. We also seek help from our computer teachers, parents, brothers and sisters.

Interviewing – we faced the problem of making appointment with YB. Senator Datuk Tengku Adnan bin Tengku Mansor, YB Dato’ Dr Fu Ah Kiow, our Board of Governor, Parents and Teachers Association, Alumni Society, Headmaster, teachers, students, local community members because they are very busy with their works. Luckily, on the New Building Construction Ceremony, we took opportunity to interview with them since all of them came to school to attend the ceremony.

Communication – since this is teamwork, different people will have different point of view. When we finished design the whole project, some of the project members not satisfied with some of the design, so that we need to sit down together and discussed what should need to redesign and this take some time.

Web Page Design – Since we did not use Ms FrontPage about half year, so some of the features of the program we forgot already. So we need time to enhanced our skill in designing web page.

Technical Problems – Previously we decided to use angelfire web hosting to upload our web site. However, when we used CuteFTP to connect it, but it cannot connected. Luckily our coach told us that maybe we can try to use the school web hosting, and it work smoothly.

Overall, the problems that we faced had been overcome, and from this we learn how to solve the problems.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

The whole project is meaningful to us as it helps us to know more about how was the local community helped our school. We are very appreciate on their efforts. From this project, we also realized the importance of English language, reading and writing skills to express our thoughts. This project also let us know that there are many people whom are very enthusiastic and warm-hearted to help their school to become better and better. As for the school community, it helps to make us realized that the many school still need help from the local community. So when we growing up, we promised that will help our school and if we are ability, we also will help other school.

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

In our school, computer lesson is one of the core subjects in our syllabus. This computer lesson is project-based, which emphasize on smart learning approach. The project-based activities involve a research and presentation. The 6-year lesson consists of 12 levels. We learn MS FrontPage in level 12. After completion of the project, the students has to come up to present the projects done. Through the participation of the CyberFair project, we have gained a hand-on experience in constructing a web site includes the homepage designing skill. These can help us to do better in our future school projects.

As the normal school syllabus only allows us to learn things theoretically from textbook. We seldom use Internet to look for more information other than the textbook. So we found that there is much more resourceful information can be found on Internet. We cannot fully depend on our textbook only. We also realized that we could go to the Internet for more information if the textbook is not descriptive enough.

From this project, we also learned many interviewing skills, we learn how to communicate with other and we also learned how to do the research in different way.

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

Hardware Intel Pentium multimedia computer – To process our data Cannon and Mustek 1200ED Scanner – To scan photos into the electronic format Digital camera – To capture photo during the talks and interviews Laser and color printer- To print out the information found from the Internet for our reference and understanding. Telephone – To contact our team members and our teachers Broadband as our Internet setup

Software Chinese Star 2.97 (Chinese – English Dictionary) – To look for the new English vocabulary (very important tools to us) Internet Explorer version 5 – Use to browse our homepage, browses Internet web sites Ms Front Page – To build the our homepage Paint Shop Pro 5 – To edit pictures and photos Ms Image Composer – To edit photos and design titles Ms Paint – To draw pictures Ulead Photo Express – To create buttons and titles of webpage Macromedia Flash – To draw pictures and create simple animation Ms Word – To word processing stuffs CuteFTP - To upload our homepage to the server Internet Access (Email) – To send file to our teacher, our team members when necessary

All these tools were located in the school and the tools were owned by school and TMEduTech company. We think that all of these tools had the same value and very helpful to us, if lacking of any one tools, we believed that we cannot complete this project.

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

The students have acted as the ambassadors in this project by arranging the talks and interviews through email, teacher, phone calls and letter. They also help to increase the awareness of the three main organizations that help to develop the school. Our Chairman of Raising Fun Committee, Mr Tan Men Choon, headmaster and teachers are very helpful and support us to do project. They are very kind-hearted person, since they were afraid we couldn’t write down all the points that they had told us, they wrote to the important point to us. We feel very grateful about it.

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

The completion of the CyberFair project enables fellow students to know there are many people are care about the Chinese education, they are not rich but they warm-hearted in collect money to help the school to become better. The school still need the full support from all the community because the number of students are increasing yearly, the school need to have a new building to let more students have opportunity to study the Chinese education. We believe that this web site can raise awareness of more people to know our community effort. Students must appreciate all the people that even to help school. The web site can let more people and the worlds to know that we still need help not only in financial but also in mental.

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

Our project involved other community member as helpers and volunteers through the interview sessions and charitable activities that were carried out during this project. We would like take this opportunity to express our appreciation to our school headmaster, Parents and Teachers Association, Board of Governors, Alumni Society, teachers, students and parents because they accepted our interview and provided important information.

Our computer teachers – Ms Chong Yin Wan and Ms Ng Lee Huang who guide us through out the whole project. They provide us with the technical support in both hardware and software aspects, planning and teaching us how to use Front Page to build homepage, cheer us up with strong encouragement.

Our parents who spent time to fetch us to school during this CyberFair project.

Our senior Cyberfair group member help us to interview as YB. Senator Datuk Tengku Adnan bin Tengku Mansor and YB Dato’ Dr Fu Ah Kiow.

Our classmates also helped us in gathering information, giving ideas wherever appropriate and drawing pictures for the project.

Last but not least, we would like to thank for ourselves (all the team members) for staying together until we completed the project.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

The actual learning experience in project-based activities is so useful. We found that a good team spirit is so important to make a project successful. Integrating technology into the learning process can make the lesson more effective, fun and enjoyable. The feeling of achievement is so great if we always try until the very last minute instead of give up half ways.