CyberFair Project ID: 4697

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International Schools CyberFair Project Narrative
Title: Trams in Lodz
Category: 5. Local Attractions (Natural and Man-Made)
URL: http://www.13lo.infocentrum.com/cf2006/
Bibliography: http://www.13lo.infocentrum.com/cf2006/citations.html

School: XIII Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace
    Lodz, Lodz, Poland

7 students, ages 18-19 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 17, 2006. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005

Classes and Teachers: Ewa Karolewska, Malgorzata Rudiak-Wojcieszak, Katarzyna Klimczyk-Kostrzewska , Wojciech Kolasinski

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.13lo.infocentrum.com/

Project Overview

1. Description of Our Community

Lodz, our home town is the second biggest city in Poland. Though the city is highly populated, the local town community sticks together in unity. The unity of Lodz inhabitants originates from times before the II World War, when Lodz was inhabited by several different nations helping one another in difficult times. We are proud of our grandfathers, who regardless of the danger, helped Jews persecuted by the Hitler aggressor during the occupation. We try to follow their example by helping each other nowadays and strengthening our contacts network. The local community is very important to us, it is a place where we can satisfy our needs, it is our home where we can always come back to. We are open to different people as we were taught by our grandfathers.To become a member of our community, it is not enough to live in our city, you have to mentally tie up with it. It is only then when you are regarded as a part of our community.

2. Summary of Our Project

Lodz was the first city in the Russian Empire to have electric trams. They appeared in 1898 and immediately got inhabitants? respect and approval. To begin with, there were just three lines, but their number kept increasing over a period of time. They ranged over suburban villages which were incorporated into the city border later on... The development of the trolley wires was suddenly stopped when World War I broke. Between WW I and WW II great development and reforms were performed in the urban Lodz transport. Until the II World War, the process of increasing the number of tram lines and their range was going on. The oubreak of the II World War put a stop to many projects realisation: e.g. the building of new last stops and routes. In our project, we present a history of electric trams in Lodz, since 1898, where the first tram line was set up. The greatest part of our project is devoted to the fate of Lodz trams over the period of a century until the present day. We shall also present the current situation of the tram company in Lodz and the plans for this kind of transport development.

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

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

The greatest problem we had to overcome was the lack of time. We have had a lot of work at school recently and we didn't have enough time to constantly improve our project. Moreover, we found it quite hard to organise the group work. Besides, we have also faced with the linguistic difficulties. Not many students have the sufficient knowledge of English to write texts confidently and fluently. Fortunately, we have found several helpers, who offered to perform the neccessary corrections and therefore saved us a lot of time. Finally, it has brought us a lot of problems to put all the information together. Many students had been writing some texts on their own and sometimes it was hard to link and organize all Web pages. However, we have finally dealt with all our problems and we think that the project is worth of a glance.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Cyber Fair gave us the opportunity to tell the story of trams in Lodz.

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

As it happens, all the schools in our country generally follow the same curriculum guidelines. For this reason, students from Lodz do not actually have the opportunity to learn many interesting facts specifically regarding the region they live in. That is why we deem the CyberFair competition to be a great chance to better interact with our community. However, this was not the only way we have benefited from our participation in the CyberFair. The organisation of the group work was a valuable experience. We found it very difficult and it brought us a lot of problems. Nonetheless, we have managed to cope with it and put all the material together in an ordered way. But before this happened, we had had to learn how to share and publish materials in the Internet, how to request information on a specific subject, how to join ideas to form a whole - united and logical - and many other skills. These are probably the greatest benefits from the CyberFair competition.

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Project Elements

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

Telephone * Digital camera * Scanners * Several Personal Computers Software: MS Windows and Linux Mandrake as the operating system * Various E-mail programs for staying in contact * Gimp for preparing and retouching graphics * Quanta Plus as the HTML editor * Some Linux programs ( Lynx, Gftp, Putty ) for testing the project. 1. Information gathering sources: * Regional libraries * Numerous museums in Lodz * National Archives* These technologies proved truly invaluable. We have discovered that they really improve the work. We were especially impressed by the image-processing tools and their capabilities. However, the technology we deem to be the most important in the development of our project, is the Internet itself. We are of the opinion that in the near future most of similar scientific projects would be made this way. This makes our participation in the CyberFair even more beneficial.

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

While developing our project we had several chances to act as its ambassadors. We must admit that it was quite difficult, since in our country the Internet is not very popular media. Nonetheless, we did our best to convince the people we spoke to that this subject is truly worthwhile. Some of us attended a conference concerning the history of our city and the presence of other nations within its community. It was really interesting and it resulted in some contacts that proved to be valuable. To sum up, we believe that we were good ambassadors of our project. We tried to get other people interested in our project and, in most cases, we were successful.

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

As we might have expected, we haven't witnessed a very big impact of our Web site on our local community. This situation is mainly caused by the fact that not many people in Poland have an Internet access.

Besides, our site has been on-line for a very short time. Therefore we believe that after a few weeks we will achieve some connexions with people interested in Lodz's history.

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

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

Nearly all CyberFair teams need help and support and we were no exception. While developing our project, we needed lots of advice. Fortunately, there were people willing to lend us a helping hand.

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