CyberFair Project ID: 4862

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International Schools CyberFair Project Narrative
Title: The Blind Children’s Lighthouse – Private Huei-Ming School
Category: 2. Community Groups and Special Populations
URL: http://librarywork.taiwanschoolnet.org/gsh2007/gsh4801/narrative.htm
Bibliography: http://librarywork.taiwanschoolnet.org/gsh2007/gsh4801/bibliography.htm

School: Ming-Dao High School
    Taichung County, Taiwan, Taiwan

8 students, ages 15-16 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 10, 2007. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2007

Classes and Teachers: Lu Hsin-kuan

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.mingdao.edu.tw/home/mingdao.htm

Project Overview

1. Description of Our Community

The original name of Daya Shiang in Taichung County is “Dam.” It is located in the northern Taichung Basin and the eastern Da-du tableland. The famous CCK Military Airport is sited on Chingchuangang to commemorate General Chen Ching-chuan. The U.S.A. had garrisoned here, so the residents were greatly influenced by Western culture of optimism and friendliness. With the development of woodworking industry, the shoes-making and the woodcraft industries were once prosperous and internationally well-known in the past. However, both industries have degenerated, in recent years, because of the industry transfer. Now the government is promoting the delicate agriculture to upgrade its quality of Flower and Vegetable. The product quantity of flower is up to the second place in our country now.

2. Summary of Our Project

Huei-Ming Private School is founded as a special education and nursery school of blind children with Christian spirit. In the past half century, they have devoted themselves to taking care of the weak visually impaired children and even the multiple disabled ones to realize their educational belief of love and acceptance: the children can grow up with dignity and regain their innocence.

At beginning, they only had thirteen students and four teachers, but now the amount is up to 230 students and 140 teachers. During the past five decades, they have always followed their founding object of the school, attempting to provide the best learning environment for the visually impaired, the multiple disabled and the mental handicapped children without any tuition and discrimination. Though they face the problem of fund deficiency, their confidence and perseverance have never been worn out until now.

Since the government cannot offer enough support for taking caring of minority groups, Huei-Ming certainly plays an important role in the society. It is its nobleness that we feel deeply touched and respected; therefore, we truly appreciate the devotion of the 140 teachers and staffs, and applaud for the brave visually impaired children.

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):

Our school is connected to the Taichung area Internet hub – National Chung Hsing University – via a bi-directional fiber optics line, then connected to the TAnet. We also rent four ADSL lines and one cable as back-up lines. All these Internet connections are fed into a load balancer so that different ISP’s could be sorted out. The parents and students use mostly 2M/256K ADSL lines by Hinet at home.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

(a) Information shortage - Before working on this project, the group members knew nothing about the visually impaired children. Fortunately, by surfing the internet and looking for the information, we obtained a lot of helpful and valuable materials for us to carry on this project, especially Ko Yen-chi ’s book, The Visually Impaired Fighter, which sharing Ko’s experiences in dedicating herself to special education.

(b) Thousands of strands and loose ends - Since each group member had his own specialty, we first worked on the project individually and made the integration in the end. Also, the teachers’ assistance in this project promoted our cooperation and led a beneficial result.

(c) Lack of skills - We all lacked the computer skills, especially the ability of web page design. Thank to the patient instruction of Mr. Lu, we finally accomplished the work.

(d) Discrepancy - It is usual that each member may have his own opinions in a group, so there is no exception in our group. And we often worked individually, so it was inevitable that each of us would insist our own ideas. By discussion and communication, or even vote, we tried to make the final agreement.

(e) Time arrangement - The class time of Huei-Ming is as same as ours. In order to give consideration to both understanding the learning situation of the visually impaired children and taking care of our own studies, we usually asked for leave in weekly-meeting of our school and went visiting Huei-Ming. We usually went there to record the interaction between the teachers and the students and to visit our sponsored children.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

By giving the promise of “love and care”, we definitely expect every child will become confident and find his own way to making a colorful and wonderful life.

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

(a) Taking it as our own Responsibility - The highest level of love is showing empathy for the poor, the weak and the sick. We expected ourselves to cultivate a compassionate and sympathetic heart; then, we would see helping the weak visually impaired children as our own responsibility and involve ourselves into the meaningful activity. Besides, we appealed our friends and family to participate in this activity and work together for the same goal.

(b) Combining Education - The goal of Cyber Fair is to strengthen the connection between school and country community by empowering and uniting. Being one of the community members, we needed to combine what we had learned in school and devote ourselves to promoting our home-town affairs. We should publicize to every one that there is an organization endeavoring to look after the visually impaired children in Taichung county.

(c) Sharing Resources - We showed our project and shared our accomplishment by internet, so every one would become familiar with Huei-Ming and might contribute their kindness and love to the school. Otherwise, we agreed to share our resources with Huei-Ming, so the internet users would be able to quickly get all information about Huei-Ming on line.

(d) Mutual Development - If the visually impaired children’s light house, Huei-Ming, wants to exist perpetually, it would certainly need the contribution and the support from the society to help it become the strongest castle for these disabled children. In the age of Internet, we are willing to show our warmth and try to make some effort to continue the development of Huei-Ming by setting the Chinese and English websites for them.

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Project Elements

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

(a) Hardware - Desktop Computer & Notebook Computer for creating and edit web pages; Telephone for reaching interviewer, teachers, team members, government offices; Pen Recorder for recording interviewee’s words, as well as voice reminder for ourselves; Regular Camera, Digital Camera & Digital Video Camera for recording the entire production process, as well as record our field trips; Television for newscasts and related special reports; Monitor for viewing briefings and the videos that we recorded; Scanner for scanning pictures and photographs.

(b) Software - WORD 2000 for word processing; Dreamweaver MX for webpage creation; Flash MX for animation creation; Adobe Photoshop CS for image processing; Adobe Illustrator CS for illustration for images; SwiSHmax for special effects of texts of title and first page; PHOTOIMPACT 8.0 for editing drawings, photos and pictures; Ulead GIF Animator 5 for producing photo animation; WS-FTP95LE for transmitting data files; MS-IE6.0 for searching Internet information and check results; ACDSee32 for browsing pictures; MS-Outlook Express for sending and receiving e-mails.

(c) Printed Material - Library, Cultural Center for searching for needed information; Museum for collecting information and conduct interviews; Books & Magazines for searching for and double-check information; Newspapers & Media for collecting articles relating to the main topic; Verbal Interview for the words of related people.

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

(a) Sponsorship – There are 19 percent of Huei-Ming’s expense from the government, and 81 percent of it comes from fundraising. In other words, most part of the expense results from the sponsors’ contribution. So each of us decided to contribute our monthly petty cash to sponsor at least one visually impaired child. By taking the real action in person, we wanted to show our respect to the school’s unselfish devotion. Also, we encouraged our family and friends to take part in the activity of sponsorship. In response, Huei-Ming showed their gratitude and believed that the CyberFair would bring love and care to these children.

(b) Promotion - We popularized Huei-Ming’s stories inside and outside of the school and introduced Huei-Ming to the students during their class of Life Meaning. We do hope that we can unite the power from the students and inspire them to help these disabled children. It is such a piece of good news that the Hacker Team of Chung-Hsiao Elementary School in Pingtung starts knowing Huei-Ming because of our introduction. And their teachers, Ms. Li and Ching, become the sponsors finally. We are surprised at the influence of CyberFair. We feel happy that we can achieve the goal of promoting this charitable community as well.

(c) Donation - In order to help the students in Huei-Ming have the chances to enjoy reading, we started the activity of “Audio Book Donation” in school and in community. These books would generate new lives and lighten these visually impaired children’s reading world. We surely felt grateful for the donation from each corner of the society, and we would go on appealing every one to take part in the meaning activity.

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

Our little effort is a force to awake and to spread the love. The minority groups will certainly benefit from the kindness from our society. We felt sad when we saw these disabled children learning difficultly in darkness and using the Braille in classes, but felt touched since they never gave up. They usually follow teachers and Sisters’ leading to complete the handiworks which are supported by some manufacturers, and even earn some money and fulfillment. All of these special children teach us the important lesson of appreciating and cherishing.

The society’s charity and help, the teachers’ love and perseverance and the blind children’s innocence and effort support the existence of Huei-Ming with confidence and dignity. We started knowing the joy of spreading love after we were deeply impressed by this school’s sincerity and unselfishness. We do hope what we are doing now can bring some positive responses for them.

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

(1) The Vice Mayor of Taichung, Mr. Chang Chuang-shi - In order to help Huei-Ming obtain much more support from the government and the society and make the objective of our project aware to Taichung county government, we reported the motivation and the schedule of our project to the Vice Mayor of Taichung. He showed a high interest in our project and approved our devotion to caring our county affairs, so he encouraged us to spread Huei-Ming stories to every corner of the world and to inspire more people join the social service. The Vice Mayor also promised to give any possible assistance to Huei-Ming.

(2) The Chief Executive Officer of Huei-Ming, Ms. Chen Shu-ching - She not only told us a lot of stories about Huei-Ming but also shared her likely mother-daughter relationship with Taiwan’s Helen Keller Ko Yen-chi, who was also her friend-like friend but died in 2005. Ms. Ko had a hard time during her course of schooling. She went to the U.S.A. and came back to Taiwan later by the U.S.A. assistance.

(3) The Principal of Huei-Ming, Mr. Lai Hung-yi - He is a pious Christian who always brings a lovely smile and speaks with a soft voice. Mr. Lai helped us have a deeply understanding to Huei-Ming and elaborated its expected future and plans. Otherwise, he encouraged us to see the world with generosity and to embrace the disabled ones with endless love. Our time with him was an unforgettable class of Life Meaning.

(4) The Teacher of Huei-Ming, Ms. Chang Chung-hua - She led us to get familiar with the whole school and explained the learning situation of these blind children for us. Her patient responses and her generous offer of many valuable materials and pictures were a big help for our project.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

(1) Awake our Will to Service - All people in Huei-Ming, including the Chief Executive Officer, Principal, and the teachers, dedicate themselves to realizing the ideal of “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” They set a good example of social devotion and provoke our will to service. We certainly see the happiness of helping others and experience the valuable life in the process of giving service.

(2) Learn to Appreciate and to Cherish - After we handed out the project, we felt touched and grateful for this opportunity to take part in this project. This special education school with Christian spirit not only made us learn to give, to cherish and to thank, but also helped us find out the meaning and the value of life.

(3) The Wonder of Life - Bravely facing the challenges is the beginning of growth. Although there are usually sweat and tears in the process of growing, it is still a proud moment when we are successful. Huei-Ming definitely realizes the spirit of perseverance and shows us the wonder of life.

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