|
1. Description of Our Community
Our school locates in Da-an District, Taipei City, where is full of energy and vigor because of culture diversity, flourish business, and easy access transportation. Local residents enjoy the convenient urban living. With the time gone by, Taiwan's society has been changed from a scene of “money flows everywhere' to a kind of life that millions of people have financial crisis. Even more, the gap between the rich and the poor expanded. The enlarged gap caused many social issues, such as child care, the elderly long-term care, and other social problems. However, there are many charitable organizations working hard with their care and endeavor; for example, Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation in Songshan District, Taipei. The medical team and staffs in the organization consecrate their time to take care of those vulnerable children. We would like to share the warm “Smiley Grounds” with others through our research project.
2. Summary of Our Project
Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation was founded by Dr. Noordhoff, who came from Orange, Iowa, USA. Dr. Noordhoff spent the prime stage of his life laboring in Taiwan. He set up the first intensive care unit in Taiwan as well as burn center, cranial treatment center for cleft lip and palate, and suicide prevention center. All those succeeded in improving health care quality and standards, while promoting the development of medical care in Taiwan. In 1989, he founded the organization with all his savings - 3 million NTD, for the love and care could spread over and reach more people. His organization dedicated to assisting patients with craniofacial to access to appropriate medical care. By doing so, the quality of craniofacial care has been upgraded. More attention and tender loving care to craniofacial patients have been drawn. Because of the craniofacial medical services in Craniofacial Foundation, many patients restarted their new life. For several decades, Dr. Noordhooff with his love created Taiwan's medical miracle. In 1998, the practice first to be known internationally, hopefully, by sharing the successful experience could help needing people in other countries.
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:2-3
C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dial-up modem
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:more than 6
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
1.Restriction of team members’ schedule: It was hard for all the team members to attend meetings because either some had after school program or club activities during lunch recess. We often fell behind the schedule. Fortunately, the teacher used recess hours to gather us to have discussion and assign jobs, and the team members also supervised each other, so that we could finish our assignment on time. 2.The time for interviewees: We began to contact the Noordhoff Craniofacial Foundation right after we finalized the topic for the project. They were usually too busy to arrange free time for the interviews. Luckily, we contacted them in advance to schedule appointments. After all, we reached the purpose to visit them, although some appointments were scheduled in December. 3.Transportation problem: It takes about 30 minutes from our school to the foundation, but not to the hospital in Linkou. That takes about one hour bus-riding. It was really time consuming for us. The teachers suggested that we should eat our breakfast earlier and then we may finish the interview and back to school without being late, no time for rest though. 4.Interview skills: We were so nervous when we were told that we were going to interview people. That was because we did not have such an experience before. However, the teachers taught us the interview skills and courtesy and we had rehearsals. The teachers also corrected our inappropriate in the practices. In addition, we learned how to use digital camera, recording pen and so on. The procedure of our interview turned out very smooth. 5.Webpage production: Most of our team members were the first time to participate in Cyberfair Project. It first sounded too hard for us to post the project on the website. For this reason, the teacher offered a computer course to teach us how to utilize various software, such as PhotoImpact and Flash to set up a web page. It was not easy to comprehend. We learned a lot from our mistakes.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
Participating in the Cyberfair Project meant a lot for us because we have learned knowledge not available in the classroom, like web production, interview techniques, materials collection, team work, etc. We originally had a strange stereotype about craniofacial patients. We have changed our impression since we involved in the research project. Although the appearances of these angels, in our view, are quite different from people, their willpower and courage against the pressure from the society are far more than ours. We genuinely hope that the society could learn more about craniofacial patients with compassion, but also more people support and assist “the angels” to gain courage to press on.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
In the new Grade 1-9 Curriculum in the emphasis on student-oriented, students may possess the ability of discovering, thinking, judging, problem solving, and application as to develop students’ potentials. Therefore, we designed and took a series of lessons which included subject discussion, team work collaboration, information collection and analysis, tools application, interview questions design, interviewing techniques, web production, research writing, etc. Through the education enrichment, students can build their own skill on utilizing knowledge and problem solving.
|
