School: Anderson's Creek Primary School
    Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

400 students, ages from 6 to 12 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 1, 2014. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997

Classes and Teachers: Elaine Robertson Grade3/4 Roula Kesarios 4 Linda Zanatta 4 Val Lynch 3 Rosette Orchard 3 Di Mastores 5/6 John Crabb 6 Andrea Leeder 6 Melissa Mitchell 5 Jackie Newhouse 5 Lyn Regan1-2 Di Phillips 2 Luanda Pianta 2 Raelene Beecher 2 P.Barnes 1 W.Sharp 1

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://teachit.acreekps.vic.edu.au/

1. Description of Our Community

Our community is our local community of Warrandyte, which is a small township of 12,000 people living around the Yarra River on the north eastern outskirts of Melbourne. Originally settled as a pastoral district, the population grew when gold was discovered in the 1850's. Warrandyte is a suburb of the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Because of the town's history and relative isolation from the suburbs of Melbourne, the people of Warrandyte are a very 'close' community. Our Community is also our wider community of Melbourne, Victoria and Australia. It consists of many inspirational leaders, lots of different people and groups that give us information, help us and give us guidance, take us on tours and help us to look after our natural surroundings. Our Community is our native animals, State Parks, Rivers, mountains and many special features and attractions. In our Community we have wonderful festivals and celebrations. We all take part in these, especially the street parades and the "Kids Markets". Our Community is a great place in which to live.

2. Summary of Our Project

Grades 1-6 have been studying famous and important people of our community as part of our integrated topic this term, which covers part of the Study of Society and Environment Curriculum. Groups of students from each class have gathered information about an important Leader of our local and wider community. The Grade 1 and 2 classes focussed on important artists of our immediate community, Warrandyte, which is well known for Potters, artists and musicians. The Grade 3's focussed on Leaders of Melbourne and Victoria and the impact these people have had on our community. The Grade 4 classes looked at Leaders, both current and historical, in our wider community of Australia. Grades 5 and 6 were studying Aborigines and focussed on Aboriginal leaders and the contributions and impact they have had on the Australian community. Their school camp was to a small town, Wandin, which is approximately 50 km north east of Melbourne where they visited local aborigines and looked at the impact they have had on this particular community. The students produced a web project with scanned graphics and photos. We added some great videos to some of our web pages. We had to capture and build these videos then link them to our web pages. We also focussed on report writing in English and writing speeches for our CyberFair Launch. We also increased our research skills using books, the internet, CDRoms, went on visits to museums and listened to many important community leaders when they visited our school or we visited them. Some of us emailed people and interviewed them by asking them many questions.

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:4-6

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):

We have 3 computer laboratories with 16 IBM Pentium Computers in each computer lab, networked to laser printers and colour deskjets. In all the classrooms we have mini computer labs. All computers in the school are networked to the Internet and Intranet. Every classroom has their own Internet address and Email is sent and received regularly from around the world. We have an ISDN link to the Internet.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

We found that the time line for Australian schools was very limiting this year, because we have new grades at the beginning of the year and with only 5 weeks to work on the project, it does cause some limitations, especially with new teachers in the school, who require inservicing of computer applications which were to be used to teach children web authoring, scanning and video capturing We purchased another scanner during the term, which made scanning a little easier with one scanner in the Computer room and one near the Library. With all the computers networked throughout the school we were able to create this fantastic project on the intranet web server before it was put on to the World Wide Web.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

It was a great project, which involved such a huge number of Grades. Everyone in the school both teachers and children "shared and united" to produce this outstanding project about our Local Leaders. It was great to have Leaders visit our school and also visit places where we met these important people and learnt all about them and saw where they lived. We all learnt together and helped each other, which was really fun. It is so exciting looking at our web pages taking shape, particularly when we added scanned graphics, audio sounds and video to some of the pages. It is a great way to show our community off to the rest of the world. We loved launching our Project to the School Community one evening when we all made a speech and showed off our wonderful project using a data projector in our Multi Purpose room. We were able to "Share and Unite" our project with parents, friends and relatives in Warrandyte and have a Grand Celebration.

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

This project was integrated into our curriculum area, Studies of Society and the Environment, where we were developing an understanding of Leaders of our Local and Wider Community. It also gave us an excellent insight into sharing information around the World Wide Web and how to develop a Web page and send Email, which is a part of Information Technology. We would like this project to become a sharing with other children around the world, by people contacting us via our email address, after enjoying our Project. We learnt lots more about making Web pages and we look forward to making even more. We learnt how to scan graphics in Photo Impact and then sharpen and compress them. We also enjoyed talking with many people in our community and visiting places, which were important to the leaders. We visited artist's studios, Latrobe's cottage, The Shrine which is a war memorial in the centre of Melbourne and Government House. We really liked learning about Australia and finding out about so many wonderful leaders, both current and historical leaders and the contributions and impact these leaders have made to the Australian community. In English we focussed on researching skills, writing reports and speeches and in Maths we did lots of work about maps. Working on Internet Projects is a fantastic way of collaborating with people around the world and opens up the walls of our classroom to the world.

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

We used telephones to conduct interviews, tape recorders to record sound, video cameras to make videos and HPscanners to scan images. We used our digital camera which made it easier to compress images without having to scan first and also we started to make short videos on our Sony Mavica digital camera. Computer software programs included FrontPage, to publish our web pages, Photo Impact to scan and make modifications to our graphics and compress and resize graphics. We became expert scanners and compressors of images. Photo Impact is a great program to do this. We used Adobe Photoshop to make the Image maps at the top of each page. The image map has been hotlinked to make navigation of our site easy for you. We used Adobe Photoshop and Image ready to make the headings and loop all the images on the main Home Page, Terry Denton and Governor Charles Latrobe Page and we used Flash 4 to make animations, which can be seen on Matthew Flinders, Dick Smith and Paul Jennings pages. "Experts" (children) learnt how to capture video. They are now keen to continue work with Video capturing and train others. We purchased Real Video to compress and then play our videos. We hope that you are able to download Real Video to watch our great videos too. You can see some of the videos on the following pages, Sir Weary Dunlop, George Vasey, Ian Hunter, Warrandyte Artists and on the Home Page, where it shows you some of the important buildings around Melbourne and where some of our leaders have visited, performed or statues are found. We found information in libraries, museums, books, CD-ROMs, which included Encarta, and pamphlets. Many Internet Web Sites were used to research information. You can view all the sites in the Bibliography.

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

We contacted many people in our community when we were researching for information about our leaders. Many children visited the important places, museums, galleries and studios etc, that had an important connection with the leader whom we were researching. The Grade 1 and 2 went on excursions to visit their local leaders and local community artists speak to them. Children spoke to many people on their travels about what they were doing about a particular leader. Grade 6 visited Wandin for their school camp, where they were ambassadors whilst staying there. Emails were written to many leaders asking questions and also seeking permission to use photos on the web page. With the Centenary of Federation in Australia we will be great ambassadors to our country as we showcase our project to other Australian schools in May. We invited all our parents to the school, for a World Wide Page Launch Night to be part of this exciting project, to view and listen to what we've been doing. We had an Open Night where we showed people what we have done with this project. We had in excess of 200 people from our community at this great event. It was very exciting to feel so important. Every group got up and presented their web page and explained how they went about making it. Here is the speech that started off the night: "Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls. Thank you for coming tonight to the Launch of our Internet Project, Leaders of our Australian Community. The children in Grades 1 to 6 have created the Web project to be entered in the International CyberFair for 2001. The aim of this project is to "Share and Unite" schools and communities around the world. Many schools from around the world are taking part in the wonderful project. We would like to show you each part of the project and the different groups will speak about their part in this project." We have been great ambassadors in our community.

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

Our project has made a big impact on our community, because we are the only school in our community to make a Web page about Leaders of our Local and Wider Community. To have our Project on the WWW, will make people in our community very proud of us, because we have shown people around the world, what our community offers to everyone. People will learn about all the local leaders, both historical and current leaders and the contributions they have made to our society. which they may not have known before. We think that through articles in the local newspapers, people will be very interested to view our Web page and see what great leaders we have in our community and how others around the world will be able to read the wealth of information that this project contains. This project has done wonderful things to show what school children are able to do and how we have people within our local community who can help us in achieving such a great project. Newspaper reports are a great way for us to be ambassadors. Some of our teachers are also speaking about this Project at a Computer conference in May and July, which will show case our Project to other teachers. It will give other teachers ideas about how to include the CyberFair into their curriculum. Many schools not only around Victoria, but also around Australia and the World will be interested to look at our project.

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

The International CyberFair entry involved many people in our community sharing their knowledge and expertise. Mr. Doug Robb, one of our children's father, assisted us with some of the more detailed graphics. One of our parents made us aware of an excellent software program Copernic, which enabled children to search on the internet successfully and find excellent sites about their famous leaders who they were researching. This program can be downloaded free from the internet and it is great for children to find excellent sites in specific countries. Volunteers gave up their time to speak to visiting groups. Some of these included, the guides at Government House, Latrobe's cottage and The Shrine, the artists of Warrandyte, many of our parents who took us on excursions to visit museums and buildings which were of importance to our leaders. We also had lots of our parents help our teachers in the classroom. The visit of Ian Hunter, an aboriginal was a wonderful day where he totally immersed and motivated the Grades 5 and 6 students into the way of life of aboriginals in our community. You can see videos of this visit on the Ian Hunter web page. We really involved all our parents at the Launch of our CyberFair where we all celebrated together the completion of our huge Internet project. Some children wrote letters and emails to their "Leaders" and received information for their projects.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

We thought all the videos were fantastic and we really enjoyed capturing these, making them MPEG and then compressing them into a Real Player format. You see these videos on lots of our web pages. There are great movies on our Home Page, Sir Edward Weary Dunlop's page, George Vasey and Ian Hunter's page. On the Walter Magilton page this video was taken when some of the children visited the river where many of our local artists paint their pictures. Some of the children had a great time at Computer Club learning how to make animations and loop photos in Adobe Photo Shop and Flash 4. This was really fun. At the end of the project the really good part was looking at everyone else's fantastic pages of the project and learning lots more about our Communities wonderful Leaders. We would like to meet some of our leaders who have been so much of an inspiration to us and we hope that children and people around the world enjoy reading about, looking at, listening too and seeing these wonderful people. One of our biggest surprises was that we were able to complete this huge project in 5 weeks.