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1. Description of Our Community
Lin Ming Elementary School is in Ilan City and only 15-minute drive to the address of Cloth-horse Color Boat Drama Company of Master Lin Rong-chun in Yuanshan Town, Ilan County. Yuanshan Town is also called the Original Town of Taiwanese Opera. From the researches, during the Japa-nese occupation, Ou Lai-zhu from Yuanshan taught people singing local songs under the 1,000-year old aubergine tree in Toufen Village, Yuanshan. Later, these local songs turned into the Taiwanese Opera. Influenced by it since early childhood, Master L in Rong-chun not only studied local songs but also applied their music and actions into Cloth-horse Formation. In the Web Fair last year, we once conducted an investigation on local songs. This time, we focus on Mr. Lin Rong-chun’s Cloth-horse Formation. Besides the particular warmth, we also understood the disappearance and difficulty of maintaining the traditional craft. As a result, in addition to recording such disappearing local culture via web pages, it is also our hope to emphasize and support these traditional crafts.
2. Summary of Our Project
To more clearly introduce the Cloth-horse Formation and Master Lin Rong-chun, we divide the entire project research program into three major parts. The first one is exploration on documents on Cloth-horse Formation; the second is the interviews with Master Lin Rong-chun and the traditional crafts school and the third one is participation in the promotion at schools. The program is detailed as follows: 1. Asking for members to participate in the competition 2. Discussing research theme and the name of the team 3. Completing the information for the competition online 4. Task allocation and collection of written information 5. Contacting Master Lin Rong-chun and issuing the first outside interview notice 6. Visiting Drama Museum and Information Fair in Ilan County 7. Discussion on what learnt from the visits and practicing interview skills 8. Applying for public leaves and insurances 9. Composing the work plan and the first uploading of weekly journals to the Internet 10. Discussions on drafts of interviews with teachers and students 11. Visiting Cloth-horse Formation Association of National Ilan Special Education School and Cloth-horse Formation Association of Zhu An Elementary School 12. Discussions on drafts of interviews with Master Lin Rong-chun 13. Interviewing Master Lin Rong-chun in Yuanshan? 14. Visiting Cloth-horse Formation Association at Da Hu Elementary School 15. Compiling written information and word-by-word interview drafts 16. Submitting articles to the School Magazine 17. Report on Cloth-horse Formation by Class 506 18. Preparing exhibition at school and questionnaire 19. Guide to exhibition at school 20. Planning webpage structure 21. Composing webpage contents 22. Making webpages 23. Uploading webpages 24. Testing and revising webpages
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:more than 6
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
The school provides T1 network with bandwidth of 1.5 M offered by Hinet ADSL as the resources structure for students. The 80 computers at the computer classroom for students offer online capa-bility around the clock. Other equipment available includes two scanners and one network printer. In addition, each classroom has a computer for online use. A color and black and white printer are available for students of each year. As for storage, there is a Linux mainframe at the school com-puter classroom for individual information of students and webpages. Each of the seven students in the team has a computer at home to go online. They can search information both at school and home.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
1.The time available for students to interview does not match that of the interviewee. Students love to interview. However, the time of having class and interviews often conflicts. Besides, many students have to go to cram schools after school. As a result, we were under constant tests. Teachers conduct interviews and recordings on their own. Relating and discussions were made separately. 2.Security issues The security is the most important thing when students go out. However, out interviews were often decided in a sudden and were forced to give up the arranged interviews due to insurance papers. We tried to settle the interviews and submit the insurance coverage time in advance as much as possible ing. 3.Being unable to speak Taiwanese Although both students and teachers speak a little Taiwanese, compared with that of Master Lin Rong-chun, ours became a foreign language and we were unable to comprehend Master Lin Rong-chun’s words.Fortunately, Master Lin Rong-chun could understand Mandarin. Therefore, we combined Mandarin, Taiwanese and postures and finally completed the interview. 4.Ideas of teachers and students of participating in the program are different. Although we students are interested in participating in the program, arranging materials and typing of interview contents is a tedious job. We had little interest. Having detailed discussions with students and explaining to them that the ensuing information arrangement and explanations are the most significant part of the research. 5.Insufficient activity funds Even though the school expressed to support the funds, we were unable to apply for settle the expenses by the school budget—e.g. buying pearl milk tea for students as gifts for their work. This year, Dean of Academic Affairs prepared the budget of NT$4,000 for daily expenses of the research and we no longer needed to settle the account. 6.Cooperation with teaching of the school remains to be improved. After trying very hard to conduct the field investigation, the information we had was still only spread within our team but not reused effectively.We discussed with the Dean and the Principal on the method of exhibition, explaining our research details and provided teachers and students with the information of Cloth-horse Formation and Master Lin Rong-chun.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
My Feelings of Participation in the Cyberfair By Lin Ai-ling Master Lin Rong-chun currently teaches at Da Hu Elementary School, Zhu An Elementary School and National Ilan Special Education School. We members also took part in the Cloth-horse Formation practice when interviewing these schools. It is indeed difficult to perform the Cloth-horse Formation; you need to roll over and jump. We were exhausted. Interviewing Dean Huang Zi-qin and Ms Wan Mei-zhen at National Ilan Special Education School, the former particularly told us the reason to establish the Cloth-horse Formation Association is to glo-rify the traditional culture. Thanks to people like Master Lin Rong-chun who would spend time being a teacher, we can preserve the traditional art. From this experience, I understand the importance of traditional culture and beauty of the tradi-tional art.In addition to appreciating the traditional crafts, we need to do something to promote them and attract more people to pay attention to the continuation of the traditional crafts.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
The nine-year-consistency education focuses on training of country people with humanism feelings, integration capability, democracy qualities, native and international consciousness and life-long learning.With Master Lin Rong-chun as our research target, we aim to train students with the ca-pability with them by collection and making of project information.It includes framing of plans, collection of information, interviews, questionnaires, and webpage making skills, etc.From the teaching site, we discovered that students were enthusiastic about exploration but without proper guide for project exploration.In addition to presentation of research results, it is our hope that students will experience the meaning of preservation of culture and research skills from this research.We keep using the opportunities to help students search and integrate the information on their own and understand the connection between preservation of art and life and culture and further pay at-tention to changes around us in life. In the extension of research effects, through publicity at classes, exhibition at school and arrangement of information, we offered an alternative opportunity to edit courses besides those of the school.Also, our research model also provides the school with similar theme teaching reference.
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1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your CyberFair project?
1.Telephone--Contacting interviewees and members 2.Recording pens--Recording interviews 3.Digital Video Recorders--Recording interviews and visits 4.Digital cameras--Taking pictures and re-shooting of information pictures 5.Scanners--Scanning pictures on the books and old pictures 6.Flash disks-- Backing up data 7.TV--Watching videotapes 8.Computers-- Making webpages, storing data, enquiring information online, burning CD’s 9.Portable computers--Making webpages, storing data, enquiring information online 10.Network--Searching information 11.Computer software (1)Ulead Photo Impact 8 (2)Microsoft Frontpage (3)Internet Explorer (4)Microsoft Word 2000(XP) (5)Macromedia Dreamweaver MX (6)Macromedia Flash MX (7)CuteFTP4.0 (8)Windows Movie Maker (9)Microsoft PowerPoint (10)Medi@show (11)Good Colors (12)Nero Start Smart
2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair project both on-line and in person.
The research is mainly based on interviews. In addition to making appointments with telephone, we also contacted with the interviewees by e-mails. During the interviews, we got to know some people and took the opportunity to promote our research program to them. At school, besides submitting articles to school magazine, with flexible time, we conducted theme study in combination of Chinese, Society and general courses to arrange reports on Cloth-horse Formation at classes and conducted questionnaire investigation and exhibition at school. As for publicity to the outside, besides being invited to take part at the Information Fair in Ilan County, we also printed folded pages of the school’s award winning at the Taiwan School Cyberfair to promote our research program. Moreover, our research also helped Town All Awarding Ceremony in-vite Cloth-horse Formation Association of Zhu An Elementary School to perform with Master Lin Rong-chun. At the moment, we have obtained support from the school and are preparing to have webpages translated into English to participate in the International School Cyberfair. It is our hope to have more people understand and appreciate the beauty of traditional art.
3) What has been the impact of your project on your community?
At the Town All Awarding Ceremony, we saw Master Lin Rong-chun leading Cloth-horse Forma-tion Association of Zhu An Elementary School preparing to perform on the afternoon from Ilan. We were speechless! Later, we learnt that, thanks to our introduction at the webpage, crew of Town All invited Master Lin Rong-chun and Cloth-horse Formation Association of Zhu An Ele-mentary School to perform. Our excitement is beyond descriptions of words. To enable more and more people to notice the disappearing traditional art from the introduction on our webpages is the power to drive us to continue our research. We were so very delighted that our research achievements won everyone’s attention. It is our greatest hope to make people pay attention to the disappearing traditional art through our project research. In the future, we hope more people will be influenced by our attentiveness on the research and continue working on digging and recording everything in Taiwan.
4) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?
We would like to show our gratitude to many people who helped us during our research. Thanks for your personal time to accept our interviews and provide us with materials, which enabled us to com-plete our research and establish the website. We would like to pay special thanks to Master Lin Rong-chun, members of Cloth-horse Color Boat Company, Dean Huang Zhi-qing and teacher Wang Mei-zhen, members of Cloth-horse Formation Association of National Ilan Special Education School, Principal Chen Min-jun, Dean Chen Guang-ming and members of Cloth-horse Formation Association of Zu An Elementary School, members of Cloth-horse Formation Association of Da Hu Elementary School, Principal Lin Hong-zhang and Dean Lin Qin-huei of Li Ming Elementary School and those who responded to our survey and the entire class 506 who took part in the survey. Of course, there are still people whom we owe thanks: our parents and teachers, parents of Ai-ling, teacher Yang Zhong-ru who lent us his car, teacher Chen Wen-zhong who offered us the web space, teacher He Jing-ying who helped us submit the article to the school magazine, teacher Lin Jing-yi who helped us buy insurance, Dean Lin Qin-huie who applied for fund for English translation, teacher Wu Xi-chuan who provided us with research materials on Master Lin Rong-chun, teacher Lin Zhong-xuan who helped us take videotapes, and teachers Xie Huei-ying and Zeng Chu-yun who translated the ma-terials to sign up for the international Cyberfair, etc. We would not complete the webpage without your support and help.
5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)
We did not learn that Cloth-horse Formation is only available in Yunlin and Ilan until we did this pro-ject research. Master Lin Rong-chun’s Cloth-horse Formation performance further blends the local Taiwan Operas and adds color boats and clams in his performances. The specialty finally enabled him to win Chuan Yi Award. His story makes us realize that, with creative thinking of individuals and per-sistence, traditional art will change with the time and generate a new life beyond traditions. Although Cloth-horse Formation wanes with ageing of Master Lin Rong-chun, we believe, as long as we have the will, we will be able to preserve and enhance the disappearing traditional art in another way. At the moment, many people have contact with Cloth-horse Formation because of our publicity and refreshed their memories of Cloth-horse Formation. This is the most significant gains and discovery of the teachers and students in the project research.
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View our CyberFair Project
(Project ID: 4345)
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