School: Dimitrie Ghika School
    Comanesti, Bacau, Romania

3 students, ages 13-14 years worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 17, 2006. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): no participation

Classes and Teachers: Varareanu Lavinia, Varareanu Napoleon, Sergiu B, Alexandru P., Razvan N.

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://site.neogen.ro/lavinia_v

1. Description of Our Team

Being the best friends and also classmates we join together in order to create a project promoting peace, because we think that terrorism must disappear for peace to prevail. One day in december last year Lavinia V (our headteacher) told us that she enroled the school in an international contest named Doors to diplomacy and she asked who wopuld like to participate. at the begining we were not very enthusiastic because we thought we couldn't manage to design a web project. Lavinia told us that her husband Napi V,, would help us with the cretion of the web. then she organized us. First of all we proposed some titles for our projected. Then we voted it. The winner was Let's peace! But we wanted to do research not only about peace , but also about terrorism, security and weapons of mass distruction thinking this issues are closely related. then Lavinia V proposed us to split the work and each of us work on a specific topic: Razvan N(14 years) worked on peace, Sergiu B (13 years) on WMD and Alex P (14 years) on security.Who could work on terrorism? In the begining there was a girl Roxana but she gave up. So we decided to work all on this topic. We received a lot of help: Lavinia V as a coordinator remebered the timeline and she put the information together, Napi V helped us with the design of the site, Mrs. Magdalena Juncu (headteacher of the school) supported us in promoting our project, Mrs. Petrina Mocanu (chemistry teacher), Mr. Ionel Bantas (Phisics teacer), Ms. Iustina Unguras (geography teacher) Mr C.Spinu (History an Civics teacher) Mrs Mirela Dacin(school nurse) and Ms. Madalina Bobeica (Doctor) supplied us a lot of information on different topics. If you want to find out more about our team visit the link bellow: http://laviniav.lx.ro/comanestidoorstodiplomacy/members.htm

2. Summary of Our Project

In our project we are going to talk about topics like peace Terrorism, Security, WMD. We tried to split every above topic in three or four major items. We first tried to define them and then to talk about differnt kind of organizations, famous people (even pacifists, scientists or terrorist) about different types of WMD, effects and measures to be taken. We know that we couldn't cover very well any of these topics, but we tried to make the people that read the information in our project to see what these means and maybe to think to a way to stop terrorism and WMD proliferation. As for our oppinion we thought to make a separate page in our project where to write our point of view. We cannot give solutions but we think the governments should hear our oppinion. if you want to find out more visit the link bellow: http://laviniav.lx.ro/comanestidoorstodiplomacy/we_are_the_future.htm

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:none

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:not sure

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

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

Our school is a little one so we don't have a laboratory of informatics here.and also we don't have Intenet access at school. So we had to work at home and also in Internet cafes

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

The biggest problem we had to overcome was that we had other school projects and homeworks to do so we couldn't dedicate as much time as we wanted to this project. So the work was a little hard. When we started we found out that there were a lot of information on this topic and we had to select what we considered relevant for our project.We don't know if these information are relevant for otherrs too. Sometimes we felt overhelmed by the problems but Lavinia V was the one who constantly supported us not leting us giving up. In the end everithing was solved so we could finish our project.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Due to the fact that in our school there isn't a magazine we couldn't publish our project there. Local media is inexistent ( the colest magazine is at 57 Km from Comanesti) But, if we didn't do this we could do something else: helped by Mrs. Magdalena Juncu (head teacher of the school) we created a Project Corner where we publish articles about project, the impact was big. The children from our school wanted to involve in our project. So we proposed them to do somethimg for: to paint or write some lines related to the topics we talk about. Some of their work you can see at: http://laviniav.lx.ro/comanestidoorstodiplomacy/we_are_the_future.htm Also, we make some promotional materials that we spread through other school in our town. The surprise was even bigger: they (we mean other kids)wanted to join the project. We will try to promote our project in a newspaper but we don't know if they are interested in such problems...

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

Firts of all we must tell the most important thing in developping this project was the use of English language. We learn English since 1998. This project put us in situation to use all of our English knowledge. A real support was Lavinia V our English Romanian teacher. She supervised the matterials, correctde them when necessary. Also we used our research about peace and terrorism to our school projects ( as Civics, History or Geography classes). The research about WMD we used to Chemestry and physics lessons. For the first time we work as a team. This made us to become the best friends. We share our ideas, our opinions in order to reach the goal: to have a successful web project.For this reason we should thanks to the creators of this contest. Working as a team was the greatest thing that happened to us. We discovered that lessons could be more attractive if we put some passion in. We also found out that is more helpful to understand practical thing then to learn them mechanical. We found out what means brainstorming, fish-bowl method, Phillips 66 or brainwritting. We found out how to make a project, what are the phases of a project (thank you Lavinia V.!). We consider these good achievements. Besides all, we found out ourselves (now, after 3 months) more mature, more self-posesed... We think that Internet is a very good tool to find up to date information. As a learning method, the Internet is more effective than traditional methods due to the fact the learning is centered to student.But, we also consider that the Internet could not (andmust not) replace reading and writing, For this reason we consider the Internet only another investigating method that need to be linked to traditional methods such as writing, reading.

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

Every member of our teamhas a PC and a mobile phone (on Orange Network)and Lavinia gave us her own digital still camera. We had home access to the Internet via cable connection and we consider this an important advantage. We could communicate via Internet (MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger), therefore we consider it as the most impportant tool that we used. We also have some pupilbooks (like Civics, Phisics and Chemistry) that provided us additional information on the disscused topics. Our school has a library where we found some updated books related to history, medicine , perspective or definitions that helped us to better understand peace, security, terrorism etc.We also read a lot of national magazines and newspaper that published facts linked to our project theme. One of the most important 'tool' were our coaches that we continously consulted for their advice, opinion. We used Front Page for developing our Web site. At the begining we didn't know anything about designing a web page. Here the most important 'tool' was Napi V (technical coach) who taught us how to build our site. We were taught everithing from opening the programme to publishing the site. Each source, each information was important for us as we specially selected it.

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

Diplomacy means the way to understand your enemy and to make him think almost the same way you do. If terrorists read the articles on our site they should understand that the peace is the only way to progress, to survive. Every man on the Earth need security (social, economic etc)and a way to assure his family or friend a minimum of protection. In our project we talk about many topics. We define peace, war, terrorism, security, WMD, thinking that understanding the concepts could lead to a way of avoiding the conflict (ideologic, economic, religious) Finaly we propose a 'manifest' for peace. The main purpose of this project is to make other understand what means peace and security and also to support democracy and diplomacy (as the best choice to solve the world problems) We will ask our friend , family, teachers and everyone willing to visit our site and say his opinion. Maybe if we share our opinions we could find a way to avoid conflicts, war... Our success will be yours too, and also of the creators of the contest Doors to Diplomacy!

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

This project represents our effort and a lot of investigation that we realize, therefore we considered very important for us and for our school, because our teachers were the ones who help us to realize the project, even tough we had a lot of extra work to do. In Romania the terrorism and WMD are not so present, but our president Traian Basescu was one of the first who signed the international protocols concerning the counterterrorism, because Romania and Romanians understood the danger of the terrorism .

Another important thing that make us very proud of our work, are all the goods comments we have received from the people that help us while doing our page, and of the people that already checked or job finished, as our family, teachers and even some friends.

Likewise, we think that the people that visit our pages will learn a lot of things and also they might find very interesting things we made, our solutions and other important aspect is that they can give their opinions in a way that they would get involved with the problem, so they could understand it better.

We also consider our work as a reference page for students that are making investigations about the topics or those who do it because they want to learn more, because we are trying to explain the concepts in an easy way, based on the opinions of some experts in this topic.

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

First of all we must tell you that from the very begining the Mayor of Comanisti involved in this project. He supported us and made lobby for us and our project, For this reason we should thanks. Also he promissed us a school laboratory equiped with computers. We also must thanks to our Bacau County School Inspectorate for their support in developing our project (especially to Mrs. Angela Sterpu - EU Integration Inspector). Many thanks to Ms. Madalina Bobeica(doctor) and Mrs Mirela Dacin(school nurse) for their helping. They make us understanding the way the biological and nuclear weapons can affect human body. But those that helped the most were our teachers. We are especially grateful with our teachers Lavinia V, Magdalena Juncu, Petrina Mocanu, Iustina Unguras, Ionel Bantas and Constantin Spinu. that were the ones that we selected to be our coaches. We have a very good relationship with them, and also we chose them because we know they are very smart and could bring us a lot of help. Lavinia V. is our Romanian teacher and is always trying to help us. She is very demanding with us, what helped us to make better our work and researches. . And finally we need a teacher that could help us in redacting correct our work, therefore we ask again teacher Lavinia V, that was recommended by other teacher and we were very thankful working with her. We also must thanks to Eng. Napoleon Varareanu (whom we chose to be our technical coaches). We thanks him for the patience he showed us and for web design lessons.for the first time in our life we learnt something very useful and also practical. Those were our coaches during the project and we just want to say them “Thanks for everything”.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

The most important discovery we made was that even if there have many discussions about peace the subject is not finished yet. We also discovered a lot of things we couldn't imagine about terrorist network, peace organizations or types of security. We coudn't imagine that there exists a lot of biological weapons (about some of them we didn't know they exists). The most important lesson we learnt was the diplomacy could solve a lot of problems if used. An old Romanian saying tells 'Make your enemy a friend'. We think that only Diplomacy could fulfill this goal. But the most valuable benefit for us was that we had to work together like a real team. Also we learned to work with other people and listen to their opinion. We are very proud of our work. Let us open one door to diplomacy!