School: Jia Chang Elementary School
    Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Taiwan

10 students, ages from 11 to 12 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on January 20, 2006. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2006

Classes and Teachers: Shu-fen Wang,Shu-Gui Wu,Shu-hui Chen and the sixth graders

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.jcps.kh.edu.tw/

1. Description of Our Community

Searching for the remnants of the previous generations of Kaohsiung City, we were shocked to find that Lan-Tian Village of Nanzih District, originally belonged to Ren-Shou Village, Wan-Nian County, and was the most ancient centralized place of the Han people. And Hou-Jing and You-Chang were adequately developed at the Ming Dynasty period of Taiwan, listed number three with Zuo-Ying, and had honorable positions in the developing period of Taiwan.

You-Chang has been a place propitious for giving birth to great men since the early times. There are a few scholars that were born here. This made the people living in You-Chang feel very honorable.

2. Summary of Our Project

He, is blind, but lights up the road of life for lots of people that can see. He, has jerked arms, but has become the main drummer of a musical group, and has held two pottery exhibitions. He, can't speak clearly, but is very humorous, and even sings for people. He, needs other people’s help, but is like a soldier, and donates money to lots of people. He, has fought three times with Death, but he never gave up easily. He, is John; his road of life isn’t easy to walk, but he is very happy……

Seeing John smiling resplendently, listening to John’s skillful drumming, admiring John’s lively pottery, and reading John’s touching story, we will understand deeply, what’s called “finding the exclamation mark of life in the calling of love”. John was born in 1964 A.D in You-Chang. He started a miserable life of sickness, for the cause of a small fever when he was young. But he loves his life fervently, and adores sharing his happiness of life to other people. Besides, being the main drummer of You-ChangChurch’s Choir, John has been to schools, jails, public welfare groups and further more units monthly to share his story of life, and perform his skillful drumming permanently. This touched lots of people. Instead of introducing what John has done and influenced our society, we have also interviewed teachers and students of our school, aiming to find out how they think about John and other handicapped people. The teachers have held an activity to let the Bright Class students understand how to do things when they are handicapped. John has now become a leader of peoples' lives. Therefore, when John is guiding us to the light of life, we write down his precious story of life for everyone in Taiwan, and everyone in the world to know about this great warrior of life.

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:more than 6

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

School: We have two computer classrooms and each classroom has 80 computers to provide the students to use it. The computers in the school have been connected; the team members usually use the computers to search for information and printing out the documents. Home: The team members mostly use ADSL to surf the WWW at home. After they leave school, we use the school's mailbox and webdisk to continue our research.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

This activity deeply let us understand that if we have disability, it will make our living very inconvenient; we also admire the braveness and willpower of the handicapped people. This is maybe the thing we learned for undertaking the disability experience camp too! But,there are still a lot of troubles during making the website; among them, the most troublesome one is the pressure of school work! Especially when it was monthly test time, we cannot work at all, because schoolwork is really annoying. It often let us feel that we don’t have any time to rest. On the computer skills and dividing works, the teachers have arranged lots of courses to learn the skills, but we still met some small problems on working, for instance: The computers at our house often crashes, causes the work cutting off; The computers of the school installed a” Recovery Genius Program”, so we have to reset the settings of Flash again every time. Plus, when we do the assignments at home, the assignments that are needed to upload to the database of the school, often occurs upload failing and mistakes too. Also, when we go to interview people, the recording pen was operated incorrectly, and caused us unable to record the content of the interview completely, so we had to interview the people again. When we were writing the manuscripts, we often don’t know how to begin. It is a blessing that we had the teachers and parents’ assistance, so we could finish the manuscripts easily.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Our project is to contact with this great warrior of life by interviewing him; we can unfold John’s story of life completely before our community and everyone in the world, and arouse everybody's attention to the handicapped people, give the handicapped people help and encouragement at the right time, cherish our own lives more, in order to let our own life more splendid.

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

From collecting the information, drafting the questions of the interview, composing the diary and progress report, to interviewing the people in our community and the integration of our contents of the website, all promote our ability of analyzing, generalizing, arranging and composition. Via interviewing some of the community’s people, we started to have cognition about our community and have interest of giving care to the handicapped people in the community, which helps us build up our feelings to our community. Through the WWW, computer, interview recording, video recording, taking pictures with a digital camera, the skills of making our website...etc, it cultivated our ability of the using the internet technology. Through holding the disability experiencing camp, we experienced the inconvenience of a being handicapped; in order to, cultivate their of life, is it train same heart to use, study how to show your care to people. Via observing John's pottery works, we found out the maker's intention and clever thought, and learned how appreciate the beauty of art. From the performance of the Kiwi Orchestra, we realized the meaning of the life and value of existing, and then train our respect of our own lives. Through the research, we learned how to divide the work and cooperate, communicate to coordinate, support and encourage each other to power up and using the power of the group to reach the goal.

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

Equipment name :Use of the equipments Telephone :Used of getting in touch with other members. Computer :Used for typing the documents, making the website, hacking the pictures, making the lesson examples and conveying the data. DV:Used to record the interview’s video. Digital camera :Used to shoot pictures of the interview Traditional camera :Used to shoot the pictures auxiliary Scanner :Used to scan the pictures and photograph Recording pen :Used to record the interview Recorder :Used to record the interview auxiliary Microphone :Used to record the interview auxiliary Printer :Used to export our data Batteries :Used to support the equipments that need batteries Memory card, USB driver :Used to store and back up the data Computer software: Macromedia Dreamweaver :Used to manage and make the website Macromedia Flash :Used to make animation Ulead PhotoImpact, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro :Used to dealt with the pictures ACDSee :Used to manage the pictures Microsoft PowerPoint :Used to make reports Microsoft Word :Used to type down our documents Internet Explorer :Used to explore websites, search for information, uploading files and downloading files Open Webmail :Used to communicate with the team members and the Open Webmail’s Webdisk.

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

In order to finish our project, interviewing people in our community is unavoidable. We will always ask them if they are willing to get interviewed by telephone in advance, then agree on the time and place to interview again, next we need to do lots of assignments and rehearsal, expecting that we can play the role of ' the ambassador ' of the community. We had thought that we won’t have any influence in our community at first, but some of the teachers in our school went to John’s house to learn how to play drums after hearing John’s story. Some parents also insisted to send their kids to John to learn drums after learning John’s story, expecting their children to learn John’s spirit of the deep love for life and the creating of self- spirit; Some teachers of the fifth and sixth grade recommends the students in the class to read the reports about John and incorporate it into the lessons, for the students to understand the miracle of life. We hope more fervently we can let the world know about John’s story by attending the Cyberfair, let the people in the whole world applause for our brave warrior of life together

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

The Impact on the students of our school From watching and admire the Kiwi Orchestra's performance, visiting the John, to the experience of holding the disability camp, we deeply understood the suffering and the inconvenience of the handicapped people’s lives, and brought us heavily impact in our hearts; Actually, we are already blessed that we can live with a healthy body. Because John has passed the struggle between life and death three times and made him a multiple handicapped people. Even though, he still faced his sicknesses bravely and lighted up his will to fight with sickness optimistically; he went to schools, prisons to share his story of life, encouraging everybody. We shall cherish and be satisfied with present situation even more, cherish our own lives deeply and show our care to the people and things beside us. The Impact on our community Instead of the problems of getting along with the society, the media often have wrong reports or the public has a misunderstanding on the handicapped people, and caused lots of stereo types. Therefore, we hope that we can let the public understand the handicapped people more through our website, and then make the government pay attention to the institution of the non-handicapped facilities, show our respect to the handicapped people and make the society warmer and more fragrant.

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

participates working item percentage Students: • Alan Chen • Samuel Tsay • Denny Shi • Jerry Huang • Jimmy Chen • Dinosaur Lin • Michael Tsai • Jason Cheng • Scott Xu • Jacob Lin 1. Collecting related data 2. Writing the outline of the interview 3. Interviewing John and related personages 4. Writing down the content of interview 5. Composing the data in text and drawing the pictures 6. Filling in the progress report and personal daily record 7. Making the website 70% 70% Teachers: • Miss Shu-hui Chen • Miss Shu-Gui Wu • Miss Shu-fen Wang 1. Holding the workgroup meeting 2. Deciding the Project Name and the plan of research 3. Offering information and the research direction 4. Arranging the interviews 5. Conducting the work on the website 15 % 15 % Parents: • Mr.Joey Tsay • Mrs.Xiao-Hui Lin • Mr.Jin-Lang Huang • Mr.Wen Fang Chen 1. Offering information 2. Contacting the interviewer 3. Help recording the interview record 4. Photographing 5. Offering plans of the research 5 % 5 % Community personage: • Mrs. Corinna Chen • Mrs. Hui-Min Huang 1. Offering information 2. Accepting our interview 5 % 5 % Assistance units: • Add prosperous sixth grade primary school teachers and students • Add the prosperous categorised resource class of primary school 1. The production and interview of the case study 2. The consultation of the plans of the case study 3. Offering the data of the Kiwi Orchestra's performance 4. Sharing the experience of education 5. Sharing the experience of the disability experience camp 5 % 5 %

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

Present John, still winning the torment from suffering of illness deeply, with the degradating day by day of body function, life every little bit is in the loss, but being positive and optimistic, he engaged in public activity fall after the people. His life is like a fainting light, though without beautiful rays, he still strive on bursting his fainting light, expecting to illuminate the dark and bring people hope.At the back, who helped John disseminate happiness and love is his old parents. John's spirit touches people; and the love of John’s parents, moves people even more. Seeing John smiling resplendently, listening to John’s skillful drumming, admiring John’s lively pottery, and reading John’s touching story, we will understand deeply, what’s called “finding the exclamation mark of life in the calling of love”.