School: Taipei Nei-hu Vocational High School
    Taipei, , Taiwan

5 students, ages 16-18 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 14, 2012. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2010,2011

Classes and Teachers: Mr. Yi-de Wen, Mr. Mu-hui Lai, Mr. Lin-chuan Liu, Ms. Chi-wei Chen and Ms. Shu-fen Yen

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.nihs.tp.edu.tw/2006/index.php

1. Description of Our Community

Taipei is the capital city of Taiwan. Therefore, it has many business headquarters and important governmental institutions. It is a city combined of original Taipei and New Taipei area. It has an approximate population of 7 million residents. Taipei is the place we grew up of and therefore we love it deeply. We sincerely want it to be a better place, and we want to help reduce the amounts of strayed cats in Taipei.

2. Summary of Our Project

The goal of our project is to strengthen the idea of responsible ownership of cats. We want to give people a contour about the general living situation of cats in Taipei. We interview many cat lovers including cat keepers, vets, a bookstore owner, restaurant owners, volunteers and cat photographers. We also manufacture a cat map in Taipei area, and collect sufficient information about cat restaurants and cat clinics. We also provide basic knowledge about raising a cat, and most important of all, we want to remind people of thinking twice if he or she should keep a cat. By knowing cats better, we couldn’t stress more about the fact that people must recognize that this is a matter of responsibility and be willing to take good care of cats for life. We ask the participants their opinions and ideas about strayed cat problems. We hope people understand that abandoning cats is cruel, merciless and will also do harm to our community.

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:1

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:1

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

Most participants are very nice and willing to be interviewed. The most difficult problem we had faced was that we didn’t have much time since we had plenty of homework and exams. It’s hard for all of us to gather together at the same time to do an interview, so we sorted the tasks and the teacher assigned each one of us different job. After discussing with our teacher, we also solved many technical problems when we were making the web page. Everything went better once we figured out how everything should go step by step and how we could cooperate.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

We started to like to do a project as a team, and we are more than willing to explore another subject right around us. With our cats map, people can find useful information in our community. Also, We help spread the concept that people should love their cats in the right way and never abandon them. We aimed not only for protecting animals, but also for reducing the amounts of strayed cats in Taipei.

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

Our project is much associated with the moral character education. We encourage people to cultivate a caring character, which can start with the attention for those animals around us. Also, by knowing how cats love clean environment, people may stop to think what they have done to the earth. Who is the one that ruins our living environment? We hope our community can help reduce the amounts of strayed cats, and preserve the nice and caring part of people.

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

We used 7 desktops, 1 notbook, 7 USB flash drives, a printer, several telephones and cell phones, 3 digital cameras, and related software. We did the field trips and had several interviews with our interviewees. These all help us to keep track of our observation and orgaznise our words. We think all those things are very useful, especially cameras, which helped us take memorable pictures of people and cats.

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

As students, we were very shy at first. But after contacting so many cats-lovers in Taipei, we realized that we had to speak up, or people would keep on abandon cats. We had to help people cherish the beloved animals around us, and help our community a better place for us and pets to live in. When we were doing the project, our families, friends and classmates asked us a lot of questions. We were very proud to answer them and even change their bias towards cats. Through our web pages and facebooks, we help deliver our belief of being responsible owners, which makes us feel we are braver than ever to defend the right value.

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

Doing the project helps us know basic facts about the cats and what we can do for them to make our community a better place. Though we are just high school students, we can still use our web page to help people gain the related knowledge about cats’ lives in Taipei. Practically, with our cats map, people can find useful information if they need to take their cats to the clinics in Taipei area, or they just want to go out dining with their cats! We can also spread the concept that people should love their cats in the right way and never abandon them. It is a right thing to do, not only for protecting animals, but also for reducing the amounts of strayed cats in Taipei.

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

We have to thank for so many nice people who are willingly to help us, especially for those participants who accepted our interviews. They showed us some tools like tempting cage, invited us to their places to see the cats, helped us gain exact data and knowledge about cats. We couldn’t be more thankful for those people who had helped us in our community.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

Before working on the Cyberfair project, most of us didn’t know much about cats. In fact, we are seldom aware of the things around us. However, the more we try to understand cats, the more we feel amazed. We might think we knew what cats are, but actually we know neither about their habits nor their favors. Through this research, we found out that cats love to keep clean and like to sleep. Cats are sleeping most of the time in a day. To our amazement, those cats which run away from people will rub against our feet and even jump onto us. Everything is so fresh and amazing to us after we started to know more about them! We started to like to do a project as a team, and we are more than willing to explore another subject right around us!