1. Description of Our Community
Yongchang town is located in the north of the city of Liangzhou, Gansu, the town area is 108 square kilometers, of which has 75700 acres of arable land under the jurisdiction of 22 administrative villages. Due to the geographical environment and some special factors, the economy is mainly agricultural production, people's economic income is not high, and the level of living is low. In recent years, with the rapid development of Chinese economy, the economic structure of urban and rural areas has been greatly changed and the pace of rural labor force transfer has been accelerated. Although they go out to work to raise family income, they left a large number of 'left behind children', the proportion of children left behind children accounted for 43% of the total number of children in the town.
2. Summary of Our Project
Our school is located in group 3 of Xiaoxi village, Yongchang Town., and now has more than 1208 students, among them, left-behind children has 543, 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:more than 6
C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:more than 6
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
Our school is equipped only one computer classroom, but only a dozen are connected to the Internet through ADSL. With 2M of Internet speed, it always takes a long time to open a web page.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
This was the first time for us to participate in web page making on the recommendation of the teacher, which made us extremely flattered while ambivalent since the web page was somewhat a strange concept for us at that time. However, we three all believed that “nothing in the world is difficult for one who sets his mind on it”. Led and guided by the teacher, we began to try bravely with keen interest and modest attitude. Our hard work in the two months paid off, and we finally succeeded. Although our web pages were less than satisfactory, we had a sense of accomplishment. Through the activity, we have not only improved our social skills, but learned something we can’t get in class. In addition, we have realized the importance of cooperation when making interviews, searching materials on the Internet and designing web pages. It is really a perfect opportunity, and we all cherish it very much.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
During researching, we got 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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