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1. Description of Our Community
Manjhou Township situated inside the Kenting National Park. Most tourists pass by without noticing the typical Kenting wonders everywhere in this small town. The wide Dragon-Rock grasslands coated by the blue Pacific Ocean, the exotic meadows, and the special seaside scenery at Chialoshui are all part of local people’s everyday life. Here you can see the scattered little houses by the road, children running freely in the fields or singing with an ice cream in hand. The people here are nature-friendly, humble, and without too many disguises like the people living in the cities. Those who just came here always wondered that with the bumpy topography, downslope wind in the winter and the heat in the summer, what do people here do to make a living? As the time passes, they all gradually found out that the people here had discovered the treasure of the Tea Mountain-- their solution of life. Together the residents make Manjhou Township an important tea origin in Taiwan, and their treasure, Port Tea, is becoming more and more well known.
2. Summary of Our Project
Tea Mountain is a small hill in Manjhou Township where the residents plant Port Tea. Tea Mountain is not a high mountain, but it had created so many wonders for us such as its being the most southern tea yard in Taiwan. We hope that through this research project, we may broaden visitors’ knowledge toward this special tea. We planned to investigate more about the Port Tea. Besides its current obstacles, we also tried to find a better way to make it grow stronger. By understanding the value and more details of Port Tea, we wish to make people fall in love with this special tea as we did.
3. Our Computer and Internet Access
A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:less than 20
B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:1
C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dial-up modem
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:1
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
There are only one computer room with almost 30 computers in our school, plus one computer for each class, adds up with the server and administrators, there are around 50 computers for the whole school. We connect to the academic network of Taiwan through XinYi elementary school in Pington County. Students could use the computer room after and between classes. To these children, though the academic network doesn’t work very fast, it is still quicker than their Dial-Up Internet at home. Since our school locates in a remote area, most of the students don’t have computer at home and their living quality not as good as the children in the cities. This is also one obstacle for our school to adapt to a complete E-education system.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
(1)We have no household computers, therefore they could only use the computer room during their free time. Besides the limited time between classes, the students also are not very familiar with the computer and are therefore not as capable when it comes to information technology.
(2)We need to take school buses to commute from their home to school. Since the school bus sets off on regular times and there are only 4 buses a day. The students’ free time became even more restricted.
(3)There are no public transportation during the visits and interviews of the tea yards. The only transportation tool is the car from the teachers participated in the program.
(4)Information of Port Tea is of little amount. To complete the whole picture, we have to collect the scattered pieces of information from visitng as many experts and locals as we can.
(5)We are less confident. Though these children are very creative, they tend to think themselves not so good as the city children and are too shy to express themselves.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
We had a busy schedule and fruitful experience. We get to know hand puppet show over time through information collection, discussion, presentation, reading, visiting, and watching performance.During the process of making Port Tea, I learned so much knowledge about teas. The most impressive thing for me is to make teas and brew teas; in fact, it’s really complicated during the process of making teas, you have to repeat the cycle of process of making teas, in order to produce a beautiful taste of the Port Tea!! Before I make teas I thought there would only be few steps to brew teas, but it’s not true, there are many tiny details you need to pay attrition to!! For example, you cannot drink the first brewing tea, and the tea taste better when it’s hot etc…, this experience makes me understand more about my hometown culture, and knowing how hard is to make teas.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
During the research process, we apply different skills and knowledge which we have learned from different fields at school.
When we analyze the history of Port Tea, We apply the knowledge from social study field to combine the geographical concept and early history of Manjhou.
When we observe and make various kinds of Port Tea Creative food we apply the analyzing skills from science field and practice several times. When we interview and collate information, we apply the communication and writing skills from literary field. And we also learned how to produce web pages and sent data by computers and internet.
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