School: Anderson's Creek Primary School
    Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

420 students, ages 5years-12years worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 15, 2005. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 1996,97,98,99,2000,2001,2002,2003,2004,2005

Classes and Teachers: Prep: Di Mastores, Di Phillips, Linda Zanatta

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://teachit.acreekps.vic.edu.au

1. Description of Our Community

Warrandyte is our local community, which has a small township of approximately 14,000 people living around the Yarra River on the north eastern outskirts of Melbourne. Originally settled as a pastoral district, the population grew when gold was discovered in the 1850's. Warrandyte is a suburb of the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Because of the town's history and relative isolation from the suburbs of Melbourne, the people of Warrandyte are a very 'close' community. Our Community is also our wider community of Melbourne, Victoria and Australia. It consists of many leaders, lots of different people and groups that give us information, help us and give us guidance, take us on tours and help us to look after our natural surroundings. Our Community is our native animals, State Parks, Rivers and many special features. Our Community is a great place in which to live.

2. Summary of Our Project

Prep -6 have been studying our environment for their integrated topics, this term, which is part of the Study of Society and Environment Curriculum. Students have gathered information about our environment and endangered animals. Preps looked at our Environment and recycling. Grade 1 and 2 classes focused on the Endangered native animals to our area, what has happened to them and how we can help them to come back to our State Parks so that in the future we will have a wonderful environment. Students visited the Healesville Sanctuary where we looked at Australian Native animals in their natural habitat. We learnt about why some of the animals have become endangered and how we can help them. We took photos and recorded video with digital cameras, we interviewed Rangers and emailed people. Grade 3 and 4 focused on the Environment and Conservation of our Environment. Students researched information and looked at how we can improve our environment for the future generations. Grades 5 and 6 added some great digital videos and Flash movies to some of our web pages and made fabulous interactive quizzes made in Hot Potato. We focused on report writing in English and writing speeches for our CyberFair Launch.

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:4-6

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):

We have 4 computer laboratories with 20 Computers and a data projector in each laboratory to share skills and completed projects. In all the classrooms we have mini computer labs. All computers in the school are networked to the Internet and Intranet. Every classroom has their own Internet address and Email is sent and received regularly from around the world. We have an ISDN link to the Internet.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

We found that the time line for Australian schools was difficult this year, particularly the Grade 5 and 6 students because they had excursions and school camp in March, which only left them a few weeks to make their pages interactive puzzles and Flash movies. We were able to use the project as the final presentation of our Term One topics.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

It was a great project, which involved such a huge number of grades. Everyone in the school both teachers and children united to really think about how we can improve our environment so that in the future we will still be able to enjoy this wonderful place. We all learnt together and helped each other, which was really fun. The Grade 5 and 6 students added some wonderful movies made in Flash and interactive quizzes which really made the entire Cyberfair such a great team project. It is a great way to show our community off to the rest of the world. We made constant use of our data projectors to share our work and to demonstrate skills we had learnt. We loved launching our Project to the School Community at night when we all make a speech and show off our wonderful project using a data projector in our Multi Purpose room.

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

This project was integrated into our curriculum area, Studies of Society and the Environment, English, Maths, Art and Information Technology, where we were developing an understanding of our Environment. The Preps learnt about recycling and making our environment more sustainable. The Grade One and Two’s Integrated topic was Endangered animals – How can we help? We looked at our local environment. We also looked at the people who help and care for the environment and the people who use the environment for pleasure and work. The Grade 3 and 4 were studying the Environment and Conservation of our Environment. We researched information and looked at how we can improve our environment for the future generations. We learnt more about conservation, recycling, pollution, drought, forests, floods, bushfires and caring for State and National Parks. Grade 5 and 6 focused on making multi media quizzes and acquiring new ICT skills particularly in the use of Flash. Team work played an important part of the project; working with partners or within groups but also working on a whole school project where we considered the needs of different groups for computer use and shared information which was more suited to another group’s web page. We all had an excellent insight into sharing information around the World Wide Web and how to develop a Web page and send email, which is a part of Information Technology. We learnt lots about making Web pages. We enjoyed talking with people in our community. In English we focused on researching skills, writing reports and speeches. In Maths we did lots of work about maps.

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

we used over 100 computers that we have at school to make this project. We used telephones to conduct interviews, video cameras to make videos and scanners to scan images. We used our digital camera, which made it easier to compress images without having to scan first, and also we started to make short videos on the digital cameras. Computer software programs included FrontPage, to publish our web pages, Photo Draw to scan and make modifications to our graphics and compress and resize graphics. We became expert scanners and compressors of images. We used Flash 4 to make animations and movies. The program Hot Potato was used to make all the interactive crosswords and quizzes. We hope you enjoy using these. We found information in libraries, museums, books, excursions and pamphlets. Many Internet Web Sites were used to research information. You can view all the sites in the Bibliography.

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

We contacted many people in our community when we were researching for information. The Grades 1 and 2 went on an excursion to the Healesville Sanctuary and had rangers talk to them about maintaining the State Parks and how we can help our native animals return to their habitats. They also wrote to the local council asking them to help. Students interviewed people for information. Visitors to the school were welcomed and thanked for their time. We had a lady, Anita come from the Gould leagues and talk to the staff and Junior School Council about sustainability and bio- diversity. We spoke to the Rangers of the State Park about how we would like to improve our environment. We invited all our parents to the school, for a World Wide Page Launch Night to be part of this exciting project, to view and listen to what we've been doing. We have an Open Night where we show people what we have done with this project. We had in excess of 200 people from our community at this great event last year. It was very exciting to feel so important.

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

This project has helped to unite our school with us all contributing our own part to the web site. The junior classes have worked on class pages and have felt very important to be part of something that the older children are involved in. It has also increased the awareness of how we can use our Intranet to publish our work electronically to share with others. This project has made a big impact on our community, because we are the only school in our area to make a Web page about “Our Environment, Our Future”. To have our Project on the WWW, will make people in our community very proud of us, because we have shown people around the world, what our community offers to everyone. People will learn about the environment of Warrandyte and how we can keep our environment beautiful for years to come. We think that through articles in the local newspapers, people will be very interested to view our Web page and discover our community and be able to read the wealth of information that this project contains. This project has done wonderful things to show what school children are able to do and how we have people within our local community who can help us in achieving such a great project and make our environment a great place to live in the future as well as now. Newspaper reports are a great way for us to be ambassadors. Some of our teachers will speak about this project at local and international conferences, which we hope will inspire other schools to take this opportunity for themselves. It will give other teachers ideas about how to include the CyberFair into their curriculum. Many schools not only around Victoria, but also around Australia and the World will be interested to look at our project.

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

The International CyberFair entry involved many people in our community sharing their knowledge and expertise. Mr. Doug Robb, one of our children's fathers, assisted us with some of the more detailed graphics and with Java scripting for our navigation tools on each page. In their own time many parents took children to the subject of their investigation to acquire information and to take video or photos. Volunteers gave up their time to speak to groups. Some of these included volunteers in Warrandyte from Friends of the State Park and the Rangers of the State Parks. We also had lots of our parents help our teachers in the classroom. Teachers, students and parents listened to a lady talk about making our school a Sustainable school so that in the future our school grounds will need minimal care. On the 4th March we participated in “Keep Australia Beautiful Day” and cleaned up our State Park and school grounds with Rangers from the Council. We really involved all our parents at the Launch of our CyberFair where we all celebrated together the completion of our huge Internet project. Many children wrote letters and emails to their subjects and received information for their projects.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

We thought the videos; interactive quizzes and movies were fantastic. You could really see how unique to show how environment could be in the future. The children enjoyed making quick movies with the digital camera when we visited our wonderful attractions and they used Flash to make movies at school. At the end of the project the really good part was looking at everyone else's fantastic pages of the project, looking at the movies, playing the interactive puzzles and learning lots more about our Environment. One of the best parts of Cyberfair is launching our website to all our families and uniting our community at the Cyberfair Launch.