CyberFair Project ID: 5086

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International Schools CyberFair Project Narrative
Title: Greenhouse Effect and Climate Changes
Category: 7. Environmental Awareness
URL: http://librarywork.taiwanschoolnet.org/diplomacy2007/c5086/
Bibliography: http://librarywork.taiwanschoolnet.org/diplomacy2007/c5086/reference.htm

School: Taipei Chingshin Middle School
    Taipei City, Taiwan, R.O.C.

4 students, ages 13-15 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on February 20, 2007. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2003

Classes and Teachers: Peter Chen, Yuan, Jing-wen, Bo-ru, Sheng

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www2.chjhs.tp.edu.tw/modules/middle00/

Project Overview

1. Description of Our Team

Yuan, age of 14, initiates the project and ask Jing-wen(13), Bo-ru(14), Sheng(15) to come together and form the group. After the formation of the team, Yuan talks to teach Peter Chen and see if he can help them to perform the research on the relationship between greenhouse effect and the climate change. The assignment of different tasks are based on their level of difficulty; member who is more familar to the topic takes the job

2. Summary of Our Project

The economic position of Taiwan has been recognized. However, the environmental issues are yet to be concerned. In recent years, serous and destructive natural disasters, such as Typhoon Nari, drought, mudslide during rain seasons, have warned of the strike of the nature. Therefore, we attempt to care for the nature and establish greenhouse gas reduction plan through research, data collection, experiment, questionnaire survey, learning slip, statistical analysis, and field investigation in this project. We hope that everyone could contribute to creating a beautiful and healthy living environment for one’s local community, society, nation, or even the world, so that mankind and nature could have sustainable 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:4-6

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

1. Pressure of time and school work: The load is school work is quite for us. We hadto use our spare time to search, organize, share, discuss, and upload information, hold group meetings, assign tasks, contact interviewees, conduct interviews, organize and edit the photos taken during the interview, and build the website. Our schedules we even tight over the weekends. Also, we cannot slack off in our school exams. But at the end, we were able to finish this project under those pressures. 2 Experience and teamwork: Cool Kid is a new team, besides, Yuan Feng, Bo-ru, and Jing-wen, other members were inexperienced and from different classes. Yet, all of us shared our knowledge and learned from each other. The teamwork overcame the problem of lack of experience. 3. Insufficient professional knowledge: Before taking part in this project, we read many books and visited websites, yet global warming is such a broad issue, and we as middle students didn’t have enough professional knowledge. Although searching for information on the Internet wasn’t a problem for us, we had problem understanding the details. So we consulted with school teachers to have a clearer understanding. 4. Communication and interview: To better understand our topic, we contacted some organization and institutions, yet most of them were too busy to accept our interview. We first emailed them and introduced our team, stated our requests, and contacted them by phone. Volunteer mothers also helped us to contact them, so that we could conduct those interviews successfully. 5. Transportation: Our research scope was island-wide, some places were not accessible by public transportation. So we needed transportation from our parents for the field investigation and interviews. They worked as hard as we did. 6. Language ability: Because our English proficiency was limited, we all installed translation software to our computers to read the information on foreign websites. We also asked Bo-ru’s mom and Yuan Feng’s mom to collect worldwide health organization leaders’ viewpoints on global warming, so that our project could present a global perspective.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

For a long time, governments around the world have placed their focuses on economic growth, so as Taipei, Taiwan, the city we grow up in. Environmental protection is no longer a simple problem of “beautiful or ugly landscape”. Instead, it concerns the sustainability of the life, property, health, and safety of all global citizens. In face of global warming and climate changes, as a part of the global village, we would like to contribute our efforts in promoting the conference on reduction of greenhouse gas. Despite our age, we want to contribute something to this world as well.

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

1. Education and friendship: To prevent the worsening of greenhouse effect, the U.N. assembled the Global Summit Meeting in 1992, and passed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In 1997, it also passed the Kyoto Protocol, which has legal effect and became effective in February 2005. Improving the global warming has been the most environmental and health issue in the 21st century, and “caring for the earth” has become the consensus for all people. In the policy transition concerning climate change, both private and governmental organizations in Taiwan are facing the pressure from gas measuring, and trying to create the wining model for the environment, energy, and industry. The environment for humans cannot be compromised, it is the respect for the nature and the mission of the school natural science curriculum. 2. Realizing the knowledge into practice: This is our goal and mission. We used the principles and theories of global warning and greenhouse reduction to authenticate the problems we encountered, and find rational argument for the greenhouse reduction method based on experiment. We also held a used book donation event for remote areas. By doing all those, we want to contribute our efforts to sustainable development of the world and health welfare of all people. 3. Keep track of the international trend: Kyoto Protocol has been in effect for over 2 years, and urged many countries to establish response measures. In Taiwan, which is not included in the Protocol, the greenhouse gas emission of the energy industry is the highest among others, 59%. Thus, the Industrial Development Bureau has promoted the energy-saving and Co2 reduction agreement with 6 energy-consuming industries, and signed voluntary energy-saving agreement with 5 major convenient store chains, in hope to save 8-10% electricity with the next three years. The Environmental Protection Agency has launched the “Co2 Reduction, We can Make the World Cool” campaign in schools, and received wide response. We hope that our project could reflect the discussion of related issues in Taiwan and abroad, cultivate trusting, cooperative, and beneficial worldview and concern, and build a solid international friendship bridge.

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Project Elements

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

Software Dreamweaver MX2004 webpage construction EXCEL2003 making of statistical table for surveys WORD2003 documentation Flash MX animation composition PHOTOSHOP CS processing photos, pictures, webpage pictures and other visual elements PHOTOIMPACT8.0 processing photos and pictures Microsoft Outlook Express receiving and sending emails ACDSee5.0 browsing and processing photos and pictures MSN Messenger communications between team members Microsoft IE6.0 gathering online information Hardware Phone, mobile phones communications between team members and arranging interviews Digital camera recording the project process and photos for the webpage Audio recorder for recording interviewing contents Flash disks, external hardisk transporting digital files and facilitating the webpage construction Computers, laptops for information gathering, webpage construction

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

Based on this research, we understood the huge impact of the greenhouse effect. The climate of the earth is getting hotter. We need to step up and tell the public the importance of the environmental protection. We will design flier sending out to the community and catch their attention. When there are enought adults who are willing to support us, we will form a group call 'Environmental Angels' to consistently monitor those enterprises and corportations which are most likely to create greenhouse effect. We will send out warning letter to the government if necessary.

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

When we are finishing the project, more and more people start to care about the greenhouse effect. They realized that the climate change so rapidly is due to their daily activities. As long as they understand the key factors which cause the effect, people may not do it again to hurt our nature. This project has been viewed by many of local residents of the community, since our school allow us to publish this web with a link to the front page of the school web. The visiting number is building up quickly and this research catchs a lot attendtion from the public.

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

We need to thank our teacher Mr. Chen. He is so nice to provide necessary advice on the each section of the project, including the survey, interviews, website creation. Based on his general guideline, we start to orginazing the function of each member and dispatch the tasks according to member's specality. Besides, we would like to special thank to Ms. Lai; she provides a lot of relative informaion, such as the bus line to interviewing, website engineer who can help us to obtain a domain, and money....

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