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1. Description of Our Community
In the north of Changhua Country is upland of coastal plain. In the south are alluvial plains. In the east are the Bagua Mountains. Yongjing Township is located in the middle of the Changhua Plain. Yongjing is adjacent to Yuanlin on its’ northeast, Shetou to the east, Tianwei to the south, Xihu to the west, and Pusin to the north. In early times, Betel leaves were the main economic crop. Later, more cultivation and sale for seedlings started to develop. Traditional buildings in this area are mostly “Hulong” outward extended style buildings. From evidence of some family house names, ancestor worship cards, tombstones, family map and Three Mountain temples, ancestors of the residents here are believed to be from the Hakka community in Chaozhou, Guangdong province. Hakka families have strong sense of family unity. They left this in area some well-known and representative historical constructions. Among them are Chengmei Hall of the Wei family, Yu San Guan of the Chen family, and the Royal House Teacher’s Residence, which are called the Cultural Golden Triangle of Yongjing.
2. Summary of Our Project
Though the members of our cyberFair Project are locals of Yongjing, we initially did not know much about the historic landmarks and their geographical information. However, through data collection, interviews, and exploratory field trips, now we not only be able to appreciate their beauty. We are also eager to lead people into the worlds of those valuable and old historical landmarks. Unveiling the “Cultural Golden Triangle of Yongjing” examines the present and past condition of the main Hakka families in Yongjing. By making our website, we would be able to attract the attention from local citizens and the government. All people and organisations here are responsible for these landmarks, which are now in imminent danger of disappearing and being damaged. We can call up to action to maintain them in good shape or future generations will not have the chance to witness the precious art and history and traces of life left by their ancestors.
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:more than 6
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
The historical landmarks we investigate are private property. They are not open to the public and residents live inside. We are not allowed to go in without prior application to visit. Our school needs to send an official letter to the office in charge of these landmarks. Our teachers also contact the descendants of the three main Hakka families and arrange interviews.
The descendants of the three families run well developed businesses. Most of time they are busy and they don’t live in the community. Arranging appointments is difficult. Weekends are our only choice. We need to be very patient.
In order to present facets of the historical spots left by the Hakka families, we take a lot of pictures. However, the website space is not big enough to store all the pictures. Our school computer teacher made a suggestion to use Photoscape to combine picture and words. Without the computer teacher’s instructions on how to use Photoscape, we would not be able to display those pictures on the website.
Computers we work on are not stable. Words being typed disappear and we have to do it again. Internet lags when many of us work together at the same time. Cyberfair’s website becomes almost impossible to access. The data cannot be uploaded. Problems we encounter in the classroom are numerous. We learn a lesson that we have to backup our work and data all the time for the sake of losing them.
We are unfamiliar with webpage designing software. We are slow in learning how to use it. Fortunately our teachers, Mr. Zhang, Mr. Xu and our computer teacher, Mr. Qiu, all unite and help us to make our work successful. Finally, our school English teacher, Mr. Chian, helps us translate our website into English. He tries to make us learn more English.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
Students, teachers and school administrators are becoming closer to each other. We and the people in our community are closer, too.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
Grade 1-9 Curriculum Guidelines is the current education policy in elementary and junior high school education.
In the Arts and Humanities area of the Grade 1-9 Curriculum, we’ve done what describes as follows. Teachers lead us to further understanding traditional art by teaching how to create art works. Cut-paste art and paint-on-wood art, making flowers by material of straw and paper clay, are done instead of ceramic and pottery pieces. With teachers’ demonstration and help, we gather together a flower blossoming piece of work for the occasion of Chinese Lunar New Year. In school, we adopt the seal characters for use on the window lattices of the main hall eaves. Columns in the House of Royalty, introduced by Mr. Qiu, are printed on the cover of our composition books. We use the seal characters in our door couplets of our classroom for the occasion of Chinese Lunar New Year, too.
In the Social Studies and Dialects area of the Grade 1-9 Curriculum, our research for our website project is on historical landmarks in our community. Resources in our community are certainly used in our visit to and investigate the historical landmarks. By having investigative field trips to three main historical landmarks in Yongjing, we gain a better understanding of the beauty of traditional art. We also help the public to understand, too. We achieve our goal of promoting the care and attention of the public and government for these valuable landmarks. The above mentioned is within the range of the area of Social Studies and Dialects in our 1-9 Grade Curriculum.
The use of technology such as the internet, internet storage system, email and message boards, makes our work efficient and powerful. Our ability to use technology well is what the area of Science and Technology in our curriculum wants us to learn.
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