1. Description of Our Community
Located in the mid-west area, Changhua County borders Bagua Mountains in the east and Nantou County in the south respectively and neighbors Taiwan Strait in the west, with Zhuoshui River and Yunlin County as the boundaries in the south and Dadu River and Taichung City as boundaries in the north. Its terrain is featured by plain, belonging to Changhua Plain. Changhua is also the county with the smallest area in Taiwan Island. It is said that there are many deer in the middle area of Taiwan and herds of deer often gather in Caopu, Haikou, so Lukang Township is named as “Luzai Port”, and later simply called “Lukang”. The ancient capital Lukang was one of the three most prosperous towns. It is an art gallery in itself where the traditional technicians live their life of art and their finished products have become beautiful works of art. Lukang is a place where only small minorities of Taiwan’s traditional crafts survive and develop and it is also a cradle of “Folk Art Heritage Awards” winner.
2. Summary of Our Project
This project theme is “Passing on the Tradition of Lantern-making-The Master Craftsman,Tun-hou Wu”. Mr. Tun-hou Wu won the National Heritage Awards in 1988. He learned to make lanterns by himself when he was 13 years old and now he is 93 years old. So far, he has been making lanterns for 80 years. Being exquisite and delicate, his works are known as “Cultural National Treasure”. Two slender white eyebrows and gentle and kind smile are his signs of the genuineness. His image has been used in monthly calendar, stamp, postcard and the leading role of liberty lottery for many times. As long as the traditional lanterns are mentioned, many people usually associate this Heritage Awards winner. In recent several years, Mr. Wu has felt that the traditional skills have no successors gradually. The skills of making lanterns should not only be inherited by his own children, he is also invited to go to provincial and municipal Social Education Hall, cultural center, national elementary and secondary schools in various levels and senior high schools to teach the teachers the skills of making lanterns. Driven by the sense of responsibility to adhere to and inherit his duty, he holds the faith that he must find the successors to succeed to the intangible cultural heritage. Until now, he still continues his mission to cultivate talents and he is admirable for his spirit.
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:4-6
C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dial-up modem
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:2-3
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
At school, we can make use of the academic networking in the computer room and 3.5G broadband to surf on the internet; at home, team members can make use of their respective ADSL or Cable broadband to meet the demands of searching the information, contacting with team members, publishing job schedule and uploading works.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
(1) Webpage making: To make the webpage, we need the certain software usage ability. Our team leader ever participated in the webpage contest, but it is the first time for other team members to use webpage making software, so we invite the computer teacher to teach us how to use the software in computer class and on Saturday morning. (2) Time allocation: It appears that we have more than 6 months to complete the job, but we can only make use of the time of after class, lunch break and a few self-study classes to have a discussion and sort out data. Several students have to go to cram school after school and in the holiday. Therefore, we often feel the time is not enough. We can only put all the efforts into the job during winter holiday, but there is not much time left after Spring Festival and tutorial class in winter holiday are excluded. It may be testing our ability of time management as well as personal willingness to sacrifice the leisure time. However, bit by bit, we can make use of spare time to complete such a big plan. We search the data at home during holidays or in the evening and use the network hard disk to upload job schedule or report our schedule in Facebook to contact with each other. (3) Preparation for field interview: We gain our data mainly from field interview. First of all, we draw up the contents and depth of the questions, which is more difficult than our imagination. The theme cannot be easily focused in case of too open questions, and for too easy or defined questions, face-to-face interview is unnecessary. During the interview, we are absorbed in making notes and supplementing other questions duly. We can sometimes gain more important information unintentionally. After the end of interview, we need to sort out the transcripts carefully and patiently.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
It is a rare opportunity to participate in this activity and we have a deep inspiration both in school teaching course and daily life. It can be said a precious experience where we harvest a lot.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
The research of Cyberfair project “Passing on the Tradition of Lantern-making-The Master Craftsman,Tun-hou Wu” aims to understand Mr. Tun-hou Wu’s profound skills of making lantern art to develop our traditional culture all around the world through the process of discussion and interview and discuss his spirit of giving lessons everywhere to maintain traditional skills. Thus, a solid bridge for cultural inheritance is built. The spirit of loving traditional skills makes us want to have a better understanding of Mr. Tun-hou Wu’s world of art. Lantern represents the track of days in traditional life. As the time changes and social structure advances, these traditional culture heritages are gradually forgotten by our society and we feel it’s a great pity. In Taiwan, Lukang is a rare hometown of artists including Heritage Awards winner, Craft Award winner and handicraft artists who have the unique life style, and it is worthwhile for those who are fond of the creation of traditional handicraft to go for a joyful travel to Lukang. This research also involves the excellent traditional culture and art in our local hometowns, thus we can contact the living environment and local customs and practices around us and meanwhile understand the cultural background and origin of lanterns. In this way, we further identify with the traditional cultures through understanding and appreciation. In the course of research, the spirit of unity and cooperation and ability of actively solving problem are cultivated, which also conform to the teaching idea of Grade 1-9 Curriculum.
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