1. Description of Our Community
Yizhu Township is a small township located in the Chia-Nan Plain. The population of Yizhu Township is about thirty thousand. For several generations, the rural areas and fishing villages still have not changed a lot. The beautiful and changeable Bazhang River, the border of Chiayi County and Tainan City, flows along the south of Yizhu Township. There are no tall buildings, great mansions, and heavy traffic in Yizhu Township. The economical conditions and resources are also inferior to other metropolises. Although most residents are engaged in the agriculture and fishery industries, the agricultural products of Yizhu Township always did not have a great popularity before the year of 2007. Grandpa Weng Wen-xue won the contest of Ten Best Classic Fine Rice Award continuously in the years of 2007 and 2008. This makes a great change to rice cultivation of Yizhu Township.
Tainan Number Eleven, a rice product of I-Mei Foods Co., Ltd., is labeled with 'Produced from the Place of Classic Fine Rice.' This important achievement repositions the rice quality of Yizhu Township, and also brings a niche for Yizhu's economy of community.
2. Summary of Our Project
Taiwan is an area that produces the rice abundantly. To consumers, the nationwide contest of Classic Fine Rice of each year is a strong quality guarantee. And, the Ten Best Classic Fine Rice Award also represents the highest honor to those painstaking farmers all the year round.
Weng Wen-xue, an ordinary old farmer, cultivates crops all his life, shows his affections to people, and is very concerned about the land. He let the nameless fields of food grains become star farmlands, and won the Ten Best Classic Fine Rice continuously in the years of 2007 and 2008. Grandpa Weng Wen-xue also brought a new niche for the recessionary rice industry of Yizhu Township. Yizhu Township originally is not a suitable area for cultivating rice. Grandpa Weng Wen-xue started from a lot of tiny work to improve the soil conditions and enhance the rice quality. And finally, he won the appreciation of gourmets and judges. Grandpa Weng also endeavored to promote his treasurable experience by lectures and education. He hopes to bring more young educated farmers together to take action and unite, and to make the dream, the hometown of fine rice, come true.
Through this project, we hope to understand how outstanding Grandpa Weng Wen-xue is, and hope that more people know the fine rice of Yizhu Township. Besides, we hope to encourage people to meet the challenge bravely when they face the dilemma, and make their dreams come true.
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):
Our school has three computer classrooms with sufficient facilities. The ratio of internet connection is one hundred percent. Our school itself is a local area network. With a special optical fiber network, we can link the Taiwan Academic Network through the Chiayi Network Center. On school days, computer classrooms are also open to students after class in the afternoon. When students come home from school, they also can surf on the internet and transfer their data by using class websites and blogs.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
1. The Language Ability Grandpa Weng started to cultivate from his childhood, and he almost answered our questions in pure Taiwanese and professional terms. We often could not understand the complete meaning of what he taught us. So, we invited Teacher Weng Zheng-xian as a volunteer translator. After Teacher Weng translated those Taiwanese words to Chinese, we recorded what he said and then surfed those data on the internet. We also learned a lot of interesting sayings of native language.
2. The Time Schedule The jobs of cultivating rice are under a fixed time schedule. Although Grandpa Weng wen-xue already tried his best to cooperate with us, the flexibility of time schedule is limited. So, our teacher had to shift many classes with other teachers, and gather us together to go out and do this project.
3. The Interview Skill For elementary school students, it should be a difficult task to take an interview and keep a record. With the assistance of record sheets, we finally made an improvement after we practiced many times.
4. The Usage of Equipment There were also a lot of troubles in the usage of information equipment, for example, indoor dim places, little flowers of the rice ears, and quick-witted dragonflies. And, we needed the help of our teacher to adjust the information equipment to solve these problems.
5. The Data Integration The big challenge to us was the last data Integration and webpage presentation. We found it was an efficient way using the blog to integrate and revise data. This project was the biggest assignment that we had done. And, we also learned most from this project.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
People grow great by dreams, and diligence makes everything possible. Grandpa Weng Wen-xue cultivated the paddy rice in an area that even the government thought was not suitable for cultivating. And, he only chose a common species of rice, not a super star species. In the face of many disadvantageous conditions, Grandpa Weng Wen-xue successfully cultivated the best quality rice. He not only made his dream come true but also benefited the whole Yizhu Township. This is the most important thing that we should learn and think.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
The teaching core of our school curriculums is sincereness, concern, health, and excellence. Our project theme is 'When the Rice Is Shining.' This story tells about an old farmer with great enthusiasm for the rice who very cherishes the land and successfully cultivates the best quality rice. We also hope that through this special project we can encourage more people to enhance the quality of rice. We carried out the activities of interviewing the rice seedling cultivation field, the rice miller, and the Tainan District Agricultural Improvement Station (TDAIS). And, we used the knowledge in the fields of language, natural science, social science, and information to finish a series of presentations. From the attitude of Grandpa Weng and the process of cultivating rice, we more deeply realized the interrelationship between the human and environment in environmental education. Grandpa Weng showed his diligence of so-called 'the attitude determines the altitude.' And, this should be the best and closest teaching materials in life education. Through executing this project, we spent an entire semester accompanying Grandpa Weng in cultivating rice by ourselves. We took practical action to research and also experienced the courses in different fields.
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