CyberFair Project ID: 5129

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International Schools CyberFair Project Narrative
Title: Food in SIngapore
Category: 4. Local Specialties
URL: http://www.haicybernauts.blogspot.com/
Bibliography: http://www.cybernautsbibliography.blogspot.com/

School: Hai SIng Catholic School
    Pasir Ris, Pasir Ris, Singapore

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

Classes and Teachers: Mr Preston Tay, Mr Tay Keng Guan, Bing Jie, ITMR club

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://

Project Overview

1. Description of Our Community

A local community is actually a group of people who accepted each other’s strengths and weaknesses and work together towards a common goal and live together

The local community in Singapore practically consists of everybody, regardless of race, language or religion. Usually the problems of different races are actually quite devastating at times. One example is the race riots after the Japanese Occupation in our country. However, the government has extensively supported racial harmony and requires us to do the same. We chose the category “Local Specialties” as it truly shows how Singaporeans interact with each other: The different variations of a certain type of food.

For example, a plate of chicken rice can be altered by all the races. For the Chinese, chicken rice mainly relies on the aromatic chili while for the Malay, the factors that makes the dish attractive is both the fragrant rice and spicy chicken.

By food, which is actually one of the main reasons why the tourists flock here, everybody can interact well with each other. Food is a common topic which we do not have difficulty expressing our ideas. Therefore our team believes the best way to show how close our community is by showing how different one dish can differ according to each race and the very fact that so many different dishes from the same origins exist together in stalls which are sometimes side by side. Another reason why we chose food is because of Singapore’s rich variety of many different kinds of cuisines be it Chinese, Malay, Indian, Japanese, American, Italian, Korean, Thai or British. In short no matter which country you are from there will be food that will appeal to your taste bites and if it is not a problem if you want to try other cuisines because Singapore has so many and you will be spoilt for choice.

2. Summary of Our Project

Our project focus on A muti racial society that has the various eateries and a well blend of food that united the different races together harmoniously. This site teaches every reader how to “survive” when eating in Singapore. This includes certain ordering techniques and the sauces to avoid and seriously consider putting into the dishes. The site also has information on the food in Singapore, such as how they look like and how the blend according to your tastes. By showing that different cultures are present in every part of Singapore, we are supporting racial harmony as the races work well with each other.

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:1

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):

It is useful in lessons as it explains to theory to the students clearly in flash

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

The most undeniable problem is definitely the lack of time to create acceptable animations and finding information and changing them to fit our theme. Furthermore, the competitions were conflicted by homework and examinations. We tried our best and we do hope the project will be in the top 10 of all the projects.

The second problem was the lack of manpower. There were little members in our Media Club and the lack of talented people to do the project was clearly rearing its ugly head. We had no choice but to sacrifice some free time to do the project.

The third problem was actually our inexperience. This is actually our very first website project as well as the first time we have participated in a web competition and we needed a lot of advice and training, further decreasing our already limited time.

The fourth problem was finding information that was relevant to the category we picked as Singapore is a country with many different cuisines so it was hard to find food which is uniquely Singaporean instead we decided to focus on the food culture. For example the food courts, coffeeshops and hawker centre.

The fifth problem would be the frequency of our meetings together to discuss about the project. For our CCA we have it only about once a week so we had to make up for this by meeting more often on other days but we usually end school quite late and sometimes we also have other school activities on.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Our participation in this cyberfair competition has definitely been a big step forward for our club as this would be the first competition we have participated in since we joined the club in 2005. This competition represents to us a test of how good we really are whether what we have been learning over the past few years can be put to good used or we were just learning the wrong things. This would also be the time to test our skills and ability to work with different softwares and come up with something that is commendable. This for us will also be a time to learn new things that we may not have known before and also to train our juniors so that they may succeed where we have failed in the future.

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

We went for interviews and talked to people with different cultures, different types of lives from ours and people from western food chains. This project fit into geography as this project talks about the people and how the people changes with time. It also talks about food, which linked to Home Economics. It also linked to Social Studies as our project talks about racial harmony in our country and how important it is. It is also different from classroom studies as we learnt many things from outside the classroom such as teamwork and time management. We learnt also through the hard way. We learnt how important teamwork is as we found out how weak we were alone. We also learnt ways of interviewing people without proper training and just relying solely on experience. We also learnt skills such as presenting ideas and getting out of our comfort zones to seek help. We also learnt more about the internet, how its being used, how the people who make websites do web pages and the difference between a good webpage and a bad one. The internet is easier to find information than traditional methods. However it is now less reliable than looking the information for let’s say a library.

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Project Elements

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

We used mainly cameras for our photos, telephones for communication between each other and of course, the computer itself. To make the pictures in our webpage, we used Photoshop CS2. We then imported the pictures into Macromedia Flash to make the flash animations. The webpage is actually just a single flash file. We then placed the flash file into Macromedia Dreamweaver and copied the code. We pasted the code into our domain and our website is formed. Our information, we used mainly the internet and some interviews from food stalls. These tools were extremely helpful and saved us a lot of time. For example, it is much easier to blend the image in Photoshop than to draw itself. All the tools were bought ourselves and we each had a copy of Photoshop CS2, Macromedia Flash and Macromedia Dreamweaver at home. I believe the most valuable and helpful tool would be the Photoshop CS2 as it could help created pictures with amazing quality and the Macromedia Flash as it really helps create amazing and original graphics.

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

When we do interviewing and explain the cause and objective of this project, the students are in a way being ambassadors and spokespersons themselves. They are bringing about how important racial harmony is to others. They also talk about how important the project was to them and they make the listeners help them in their project. We used mainly the phone to interview the people for information such as how western food is made. However, when the person is busy, we will have go to the stalls personally to interview the person. The people are impressed with our work and they are willing to give us information for our project. They will also be seen muttering to themselves, smiling as they communicate through their dialects and mother tongues.

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

Our project will inform people the good sides on racial harmony. We hope that it will also attract more tourists to help our countries economy since one reason why people come to Singapore is because of its food. We also hope to get rid of racists in our country. This I believe will also help people understand the different cultures of the different races such as for the Malay culture where they believe they have to pray before an animal can be slaughtered and cooked.

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

We needed a lot of help in our project. Firstly, the information we needed was mostly either from the internet or from other people. If we were just merely getting information from the internet, why would people bother to look at our website? Why bother to find our website as they would be millions of other sites similar to ours? So We tried to make the site as original as possible, making sure that at least 90% of our information is from the experiences of people. In order to achieve this we went to food courts and restaurants to interview the different people there such as certain information on the kind of food they served and how it is made. So therefore we needed experienced web developers help in teaching us how to get good and original information. Secondly, we needed to learn how to create a good webpage which captures the reader’s attention immediately. Therefore we also asked experienced web developers to teach us how to create websites using Photoshop CS2, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Flash and Macromedia Fireworks.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

We discovered how people cook their food traditionally and how food important food is to us and thus we have to treasure them

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