1. Description of Our Community
Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin was born in 1957 in a small town called Tungkang in Pingtung county, Taiwan. Mr. Lin’s father was one of the most important photographers in Taiwan, he was very open minded and he paid much attention in educating his own children. Lin’s father was fond of listening to classical music at home, the melodious music was quite unusual in such a fishing village at the time. It often attracted people around to stop by and listen, friends and family gathered together to chat about arts. Mr. Lin’s second older brother, Wan-Yen Lin, he even founded an art club. Growing up in an environment which was surrounded by different types of art works and activities, such as temple fairs, it opened up Mr. Lin’s view and he started designing. After graduating from the Fine Arts school from the Normal University in Taiwan, he puts into practices to promote art designs in education, in practical uses and in extension to the general population. Working at the field for over thirty years, Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin acknowledges with Harvard University’s school motto “You can’t choose where you are born but you can choose where your heart belongs”. Mr. Lin’s native homeland is Tungkang, a fishing village by the ocean in beautiful Taiwan-Formosa, but his heart belongs to the beauty of arts and the love to design. Professor Apex Pang-Soong Lin’s series of works, “My Taiwan”, have touched so many people’s heart including ours. He has turned his loves to his native homeland over into pieces of paintings that tell lots of memorable and vivid stories of this beautiful island to the world.
2. Summary of Our Project
Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin has been devoted himself to creation of art design. We agree with his words: “Taiwan is really beautiful. I’m not a supporter of selfish departmentalism, but I insist that we should start from Taiwan’s local culture first. Then we can extract other cultures’ essence. In this way, we can develop different horizons and perspective of design!” We are also touched that Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin uses local style of craft to present new visual views and brings Taiwan to the international stage by design. We want to explore the following questions: 1.What makes Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin be willing to delicate himself to art designs in education, in practical uses and in extension to the general population for more than thirty years? 2.How does Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin integrate local culture into design work? 3.In the process of creation, did Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin encounter bottleneck? How did he break through the bottleneck? 4.What are Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin’s suggestions for those people who have dreams? Our study methods include observation, interview and documental analysis. Besides interviewing Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin to better understand his views and creativity, we went to Kaohsiung to visit his exhibition, observe his works and creating process, and interview other audience in person. We also studied the related information about Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin, including books, websites and reports. We made the study process and result into the website “The luminary of design in Taiwan- Apex Pang-Soong Lin”. We recorded the process of creation and development to spread the software of Taiwan’s design. We also hope to tell everyone in the world by the power of internet that Taiwan’s modern design is full of beauty and values!
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:dedicated connection
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:4-6
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
(1)Schedule arrangement It was such a difficulty in the process of inviting because Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin had a very full schedule. He was usually abroad. He accepted our interviews for five times within such a tight schedule. It was obvious that 20-hour interview was surely insufficient so we had to study Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin’s books attentively. (2)Interview skills There were few people in our team who had experiences of interviews. For elementary school students, interviewing is not an easy task. But we were lucky to have our parents. They helped us practice and stimulate the interviews for many times. With the assistance of listening to the tape-recording and watching the videos, we made progress step by step. (3)Webpage-making techniques Most of our teammates were novices in creating special topic web pages, so it was quite frustrating for us to write the program, lay out the webpage, and standardize the form and the size of the pictures. We could only improve by trial and error. (4)Complexity of the project The School Cyberfair not only focused on the result, it also emphasized on the process. From the interviews, recordings, paintings, photographing, program writing, editing to the final test for the website, we encountered tons of difficulties. In the process, we learned to plan schedules and follow the project to monitor our progress. Most importantly, we learned to record every important meeting and discussion as the basis of next assignment. (5)Final completion The biggest challenge was the final integration and the presentation of the website. If we had few problems that could not be solved, we would let our team leader to make the final decision or turn to our instructors for help. This project was the biggest assignment we have ever done, and it was also the homework we have learned the most.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
What we have learned: When the project was close to the end, we felt deeper and stronger. From the beginning, we started this project in October, 2012. It seemed at first that four months of preparation time was sufficient enough, but it turned out it was true at all. We needed to rewrite and rewrite, modify again and again, and design the website in every detail. But for those students who participated in this project, we really learned a lot from this contest. First, beside for assignment and examinations, we have always wanted to apply what we have learned in the computer lessons from the 3rd grade. Therefore, we really appreciated this opportunity for us to apply what we have learned. Also, teamwork made us feel closer, and we would have a wonderful memory in our childhood.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
When competing in a contest, our instructors and parents told us from the beginning of the project that we had to learn everything with our utmost: hold the meetings, monitor the schedule, do the charity, make questionnaire and survey, and even worksheets that related to the curriculum. As a result, we tried to apply what we have learned to other subjects. We combined and brought other subjects’ learning competences into full play. (1)Combination with curriculum of art This project made us understand the differences between tradition Chinese paintings, western paintings and visual design curriculum. After Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin’s explanation, we became more and more sensitive about the meaning and influence of a design chart. Besides, because we watched Soka Gakkai International’s report about Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin, we were so interested to perform the incidental music “If we open the window of our heart”. It was also one of Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin’s favorite songs. (2)Combination with curriculum of technology We usually use computers to surf the internet, use facebook, send emails, and play games. The purpose is for information and entertainment. But this time we transformed from users to designers. We had to learn a lot of software and hardware, including creating web pages, processing videos, using electronic products. We never learned these things before, and we had chance to learn this time. We had so much sense of achievement. (3)Combination with curriculum of social science With the guidance of instructors, we made good use of our three tools: worksheet, work schedule, and opinion survey (to investigate our classmates understanding of Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin’s paintings). All of them helped us more understand Mr. Apex Pang-Soong Lin and his works. The following was the tree tools
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