|
1. Description of Our Team
We call our team Quigang since 2004, when we participated Motorola Diversity competition for web designers. Let me introduce our members and their contribution to the Quigang Science & Technology Web Page. Maja, 19 years old. She is responsible for creating and administrating our project web page, adding new contents and polling. Her forte is Internet and Software. She has also made interviews for the project. Mirek, 18 years old. He is in charge of writing articles about space, global health and ethics of science. Agata, 19 years old. She focuses on the history, ethics, women who entered science and technology fields. Mirek Artur Rusin, coach and server administrator. He configured the sever and installed our website. Bogdan Franczyk, coach and IT teacher. He watched over the project and helped with organising surveys in our school.
2. Summary of Our Project
Our Quigang Team is fully convinced that the most important for the World’s diplomacy is communication technology and information technology. In our project you can read articles – where you can find most of the information on Science & Technology. There are also ‘Surveys’ – provided by our Team, some of them were taken on the Internet and some live. As you jump into the ‘Interviews’ section you will learn how Polish science and technology institutions cooperate nationally and internationally within scientific researches. ‘How to…’ section is devoted to the newest information technology tools, eg. RSS, XML. You can also learn how to use free open source applications collected in ‘Downloads’ section You can also learn more ‘About us’ and ‘Search’ one the Web. The last section is ‘Bibliography’ section. When you click it you can view all the sources we used in our Quigang Science & Technology Website.
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: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
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
Main problems we had to overcome were preparations to the our final exams we are going to take in April and May. We are the first generation experiencing the new system after education reform.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
Before we entered the Competition we thought we know a lot about science and technology, but now, when we got involved in the subject we understand it is only a grain of mustard seed. Thanks to the project we learnt about our local science and technology institutions and their achievements and relationships.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
In the Quigang Project we focused on Technology productivity tools (eg. Pajaczek http://www.pajaczek.pl as HTML authoring tool, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Flash, Apache Server, PHP technolgy, RSS technology). We believe that providing technology makes the Website more friendly and up-to-date, especially the News Feeds are imported from CNN News, Wireless News, etc., so the Web is dynamic and lives its own life. If we consider team-work, you can’t avoid using Technology communications tools like Skype http://skype.com as a voice communicator, Gadu-Gadu http://gadu-gadu.pl as a text communicator, e-mail box, and so on. During the research on the Internet, we used Technology research tools (Google search engine, Microsoft Word – for editing articles, Microsoft Excel (to collect data), SciTe http://scintilla.org/ - to edit text quickly, Tatal Commander – to work with files. We feel that it is important for World’s diplomacy to introduce Technology problem-solving and decision-making tools like MindManager http://www.mindjet.com/. Making mind maps, brain storms helps to create projects and arrange good ideas.
Some technical issues we were coping with during the project preparation are a part of our school curriculum guidelines, especially creating web pages, coping with large, group projects and making decisions. Also IT, Mathematics and Physics knowledge fits and even exceeds school requirements. We learnt HTML and Flash, work in a group. We also made some interviews and surveys. We also got to know more about scientists’ work. We practiced many group concepts, especially conferences with local groups form University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow, Rzeszow University of Technology and Univesity of Rzeszow. We understand now that science and technology issues are significant to the diplomacy, peculiarly communication and information technology. Our class specialisation is Mathematics-Physics-Informatics so dealing with science and technology issues was like a ‘sandwich course’. The Internet and technologies around it has been extremely helpful for us. We were using not only Google search engine as our main gateway to knowledge but also whole kind of communication software that helps us to discuss problems and exchange ideas.
| 
