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1. Description of Our Community
The “Ten Ren Tea Shop on Ling-Shen N. Road” that we researched is located in the Zhong Shan District of Taipei City, the capital of Taiwan. Even since the Japanese-era, this District has long been prosperous. Many foreign visitors, mostly from Japan, have come here for business and for sightseeing. Recently, with the building of some modern facilities, much as the Mass Transit Transportation System, commercial office buildings, luxurious hotels, and mega shopping malls, Zhong Shan District has turned out to be much more important than before. One of the nearby world-class building in the Grand Formosa Regent where many internationally-famous celebrities have stayed and where the owner of the Ten Ren Tea Shop had the privilege to perform the arts of making and serving tea to them. Another crowd-puller in the Shin-Shin Movie Theater, the only movie theater in this area, which attracts customers young and old to the tea shop. Among the numerous coffee shops and fast food chain stores, Ten Ren Tea Shop offers unique products, ambience and services that set itself apart.
2. Summary of Our Project
A series of interviews were conducted to find out how a small shop like this can achieve successful operation. Questionnaires were designed for an analysis of its customer group and their choice. Photos are given to present the business run in this shop and the merchandise sold in this shop. Web pages and website were designed and constructed on school computers under school teachers' instruction.
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: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):
The 100 computers in the two computer rooms are not always available. Without teacher’s permit on the application to the school authorities, students can not use them except during the computer class. Although the speed of internet is rather fast, yet the speed tends to slow down when there are too many files to upload. Besides, under the control of the school authorities, some websites are not available, causing much inconvenience.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
Challenge1: Language Participating in the international-wide contest has long been difficult for us. While designing own website, the first obstacle we met was “English-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-English translation”. As high school students living, growing up in Taiwan, speaking and thinking always in Chinese, we found it hard to read all the rules, regulations, procedures and terminologies stated in English. When we were introducing the tea-related products, we need to either create some new terms in English or use Ping-Yin Romanization System to name our products. Under the guidance of our teachers, we have overcome the difficulties, and for the first time in our lives we found English ability really essential. Challenge2: PC skills Computer skill is another challenge we faced. In our team, none of us had hands-on experience in designing a website. It was actually our first close encounter with many computers software. We exercised our muscles to learn, to ask, to search reference books to carry out our plans. One of our concerns is setting the size of the website page, that is the “Viewing distance” of the page; at what distance, on what layout of the page will the viewers feel comfortable and relaxed reading our pages. We kept on adjusting, adjusting and adjusting, just for that ideal “Viewing distance”. Our equipments, mainly computers, were provided by our school, and we also relied on our own desk-tops at home. The various characteristics of our desk-tops and the ever inconsistent performance of the internet system greatly influenced our timetable. Challange3: Time We actually live in this school---a boarding school. From Monday morning to Saturday noon, without permit no one can leave school. We lead a 6:00 A.M. to 10:00P.M. life, so we have had little time at our disposal, only the ten-minute recesses and the noon breaks. All the interviews, questionnaire distribution and website design could only be done on weekends and holidays. We need to coordinate the spare time of our team members and the interviewee---the ever-busy manager of Ten Ren Tea Shop – Mrs. Chou. The most frightening and nervous part of our research is when distributing our questionnaires to total strangers. No matter how they reacted, we were always smiling. On several occasions we communicated with the Japanese customers in English plus body languages, that was interesting.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
Through this research, we learned much about tea. And from the interviews we saw how a successful enterprise promotes its products and also how it introduces the tea culture of our country. What this company has emphasized is the long-term relationship between the company and its customers, not always the benefit they can possibly make. We also realized that perseverance leads to our goals; never give up questioning, communicating in the right way and with the right attitude bring the tasty fruit of accomplishments.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
1.We have learned to merge one of the school projects 'Tea Culture in Taiwan' with what we learn in Taiwan's history and geography courses. We have come to know better the elements of achieving enterprise excellence. We have known beyond a high figure of sales but more of the techniques of management that lead to success. 2.The project has to be presented on the Internet, which is so different from the conventional way of written reports. Therefore, cyber literacy is more than just a course and Internet facilities have become an issue in school management. We also exposed ourselves to information that is not to be learned in the textbook, like tea leaves, tea pots, or business management. In addition, we've learned how to efficiently search data online or how to use the digital camera in a more advanced way than just taking photos. The popularity of computers and the Internet have made a great difference in our daily lives, so should they be applied to our schooling. With the Internet, our learning will become more diverse and interesting, giving us faster and easier access to knowledge with no limits, and this is what conventional education needs most.
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