1. Description of Our Community
Our county is located at the southern edge of Inner Mongolian Plateau as well as in the northwest of Hebei Province. It is a national-level poverty-stricken county with a population of 194,300, of which 148,300 are engaged in agriculture while 155,400 are permanent residents. Owing to the limitations of geographical environment and other specific factors, the county economy is dominated by agriculture, and people are earning a modest income and living a poor life. With the rapid development of national economy in recent years, the structures of urban and rural economy have been changed dramatically, and the labor force in rural area has shifted more quickly. As a result, large numbers of labors in our county have joined in the migrant labor group as well. More and more farmers go out as migrant workers, and most of them are young adults. Every year, more than 38,000 people in our county leave their home for income improvement while leaving their children at home, thus making 45% of children in our county left-behind.
2. Summary of Our Project
Among 1,271 students in our school, 328 are left-behind students, taking up 30.1%. Most of them live with their old grandparents or other relatives or even some hosts of private apartments. Those temporary guardians always pay more attention to the raising than to their education. Since the parents who are far from being competent guardians are working outside and have little time to stay and communicate with their children, and the predominant generation-skipping education still leaves much to be desired, left-behind children are thirsty for family love, thus developing some problems in mental health, personality and study. As a result, those children who should have been the apples of their parents’ eyes now gradually become a vulnerable group. Therefore, we confine our investigation to the left-behind students around us, so as to do our own small part to help them and let them know that they are not alone any longer.
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:dedicated connection
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:4-6
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
a?Limitations on basic knowledge of computer and web page making. We almost know nothing about the Internet and software. Even so, teachers teach us patiently, and encourage us to learn by doing.
b?Network problems. Due to the relocation of teaching building, computer room is under the construction and is till unavailable, therefore, fewer computers can be used to surf the Internet with a rather low network speed.
c? Time pressure. In order not to affect study, we have to squeeze and make use of all possible time like break time and weekends to finish interviews, investigations and web pages.
d?Difficulties in interviews. We ran across heavy snow during researching. We were troubled by 8-centimeter-thick now. However, we left all difficulties aside and finally finished work successfully.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
During researching, we have received great support from school leaders, teachers and especially all head teachers, thus guaranteeing the success of our research. For two months, we have experience more happiness than difficulties. It is really nice that we can come up to them to understand their thoughts and stories. Through the activity, we have not only known about how to take and process pictures, how to operate computer, design and make web page, and make interviews, but learned to be strong and brave, and improved our social practice ability and collaboration skills.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
We mainly base our research mainly on practical activities, such as interview, investigation, taking pictures, collecting information about left-behind students and their parents or temporary guardians. Moreover, we also spare no pains to collect, sort, calculate and tabulate relevant data. All those activities call for knowledge we’ve learned in Math, Morality and Society, Computer and other classes.
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