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1. Description of Our Community
'Kaohsiung' is situated on the southwestern coast of Taiwan, facing the Taiwan Strait to the west and, beyond the southern tip of the island, the Bashi Channel to the south. It sits across vital sea-lanes connecting Northeast Asia with the indian Ocean, and offers outstanding commercial port facilities. 'To welcome the World Games 2009 in Kaohsiung', Kaohsiung City government has lunched a series of construction projects, expecting to build an “ocean capital city.”
'Youchang' is located in the north of Kaohsiung City, closed to Houjing River and belonged to Nanzih District. Its history can be traced back to the earliest Chinese immigrants in Kaohsiung, when some soldiers were sent to set up a camp named 'the Right Camp' in Youchang area by Jheng Cheng-gong of the Ming Dynasty probably in 1661A.D.
There are four temples now in Youchang area:Yuan-Shuai Temple, San-Shan-Guo-Wang Temple (Temple of the Three Mountain-Kings), Ford Temple?(Temple of the Land-God), Ford Temple?(Temple of the Land-God). These temples are the faith centre of Youchang residents. In Youchang, there is no Chung Yuan Pudu for the commemoration of the dead on Ghost Festival in the seventh lunar month. It is very different from other places in Taiwan. That is because Yuan-Shuai Temple emphasizes no extravagant manners. The temple established a management committee, which executes a lot of meaningful and highly-praised programs, such as sending rice and groceries to poor families and awarding excellent students with scholarships.
2. Summary of Our Project
Four main temples, Yuan-Shuai Temple, San-Shan-Guo-Wang Temple (Temple of the Three Mountain-Kings), Ford Temple?(Temple of the Land-God), Ford Temple?(Temple of the Land-God), are just enclosed into a rhombus, defend everything of Youchang area, and have become the place where Youchang resident's soul repose on. Among them Yuan-Shuai Temple developed first, It occupies on the important position of the traffic routes, and becomes the landmark and spokesman of Youchang gradually.
Our research through real visit and investigation wants to understand the history of Yuan-Shuai Temple, its deities, its architecture, its community influences, its special customs, its activities and its future development. With the research, enable people to understand the history and legend of Yuan-Shuai Temple, make more people know the value and historic significance of 'Youchang Yuan-Shuai Temple'!
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):
[School] We have two computer classrooms and each classroom has 80 computers to provide the students to use it.
The computers in the school have been connected; the team members usually use the computers to search for information and printing out the documents.
[Home] The team members mostly use ADSL to surf the WWW at home. After they leave school, we use the school's mailbox and webdisk to continue our research.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
[Interviews] Problems: Interview is an important topic of our project, because we want to know more about Yuan-Shuai Temple. For time is limited, how to get in touch with those people and how to translate those recording contents of interviews are difficult work. In addition, transportation is also a big problem for us!
Solution: Three teachers helped us to get in touch with some experts of Yuan-Shuai Temple, and we interviewed some locals in temple on weekend. Our team members worked together on a project but did different things at the same time. So that we have completed our missions efficiently in our limited time. As for transportation, we have many enthusiastic parents to give us a ride.
[Technologies] Problems: Though we had accepted the training of interview in fifth grade, but we were still nervous because it was the first time for us to close-up interview.
Solution: Before each interview, we surfed Nets and collected related materials of Yuan-Shuai Temple; Then we edited these materials and made interviewing questions. Because prepareing in advance, we had enjoyed interviews each time.
[Data Assortment] Problems: Because there are very few related materials about 'Yuan-Shuai Temple', we didn't know how to start our project and we needed to take much time to collect data.
Solution: First, we planed the studying category. Second, everyone had his own categorical data to collect. Third, we interviewed different kinds of people to help our research. Finally, we discussed, analyzed and reorganized these data together.
[Software] On the computer skills and dividing works, the teachers have arranged lots of courses to learn the skills, but we still met some small problems on working, for instance: The computers at our house often crashes, causes the work cutting off; The computers of the school installed a' Recovery Genius Program', so we have to reset the settings of Flash again every time. Plus, when we do the assignments at home, the assignments that are needed to upload to the database of the school, often occurs upload failing and mistakes too.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
At the time of this research, in order to make us understand the beauty of traditional architecture of China, our teachers always wanted us to appreciate the layout, totems, and architecture of Yuan-Shuai Temple. Meanwhile, they also requireed us to experience the calm and peaceful atmosphere filled in the temple.
In order to let us understand more the history of Yuan-Shuai Temple, our teacher invited Mr. Chu-Hua Sun who is a master in studying of Yuan-Shuai Temple to tell us the information about the temple. After her telling, we found in surprise that Yuan-Shuai Temple have been existed for a long time since Ming Dynasty, and Youchang is the area which Chinese immigrants inhabited first in Kaohsiung.
When the teachers leaded us to visit shops and locals around Yuan-Shuai Temple, we founnd that they all respect and thank for Yuan-Shuai Temple very much! We hope sincerely that resident's dense love to Yuan-Shuai Temple can be known by more people!
Besides, united is an important factor in a group, and it inspired us to worke harder in our daily life. It is a special experience which we could not learn in our school.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
1 From collecting the information, drafting the questions of the interview, composing the diary and progress report, to interview the people in our community and the integration of our contents of the website, all promote our ability of analyzing, Marshalizing, arranging and composition.
2 Through the WWW, computer, interviewing recording, video recording, taking pictures with a digital camera, the skills of making our website...etc, it cultivated our ability of the using the internet technology.
3 Via interview some of the community's people, we started to have cognition about our community and have interest of giving oure care to people in the community.
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