1. Description of Our Community
On every single day, monument restorers from all over the world dedicate their best efforts to helping all kinds of artifacts to regain their lost brilliance. As Taiwanese students, we decided to place the emphasis of our project on our home country, Taiwan. Looking at the gorgeous island that has nurtured us since we were born, we felt the responsibility to present the original beauty of Taiwanese artifacts and architectures to the global community. For the purpose of making our project as clear and detailed as possible, every restoration project within the Taiwanese boundaries is subjected to our investigation and research. Motivated by our wish to make everything perfect, we tried our very best to produce paragraphs after paragraphs, each explaining the different elements of monument restoration, their corresponding values, and also the difficulties of restoring varying kinds of monuments all around the nation. Considering the cultural scope, our project contains even more different aspects. Architectures throughout history are constructed to satisfy human needs, no matter if it’s accommodation or other purposes. Due to this reason, almost everything that is related to humans and our daily lives is applicable to these buildings, and a monument restorer must have profound knowledge in all of these fields and details, such as masonry and visual arts, in order to thoroughly restore the glory of the monuments. Additionally, the monuments being researched by our team could date back to different time periods and are the works of varying groups of people. The different construction methods, as well as intents of the architectures make monument restoration a difficult field that might seem abstruse for the common public. Although our project includes a myriad of details within the geographic and cultural parameters of monument restoration, we would definitely organize and present the information in the nicest and clearest manner possible.
2. Summary of Our Project
Just like how the English proverb goes, time is like a river. One cannot touch the same water twice because the flow that has passed will never pass again. Indeed, time is a selfish thief, who stealthily robs the brilliance and beauty of monuments under the unawareness of people. To our team, monument restoration is a field that sounds mysterious but intriguing. While time continues to fly like an arrow, these dexterous restorers present history in front of us in a completely freshened appearance, enabling the magnificence of the old times to be forever preserved. In order to accomplish these great tasks, monuments restorers incorporate modern technology into traditional methods, thereby forming an astonishing mixture of both traditional and modern heritages in their works. Even though monument restoration might sound like a dreamy, almost magical ground, such superlative workmanship is indeed the result of hard work and determination. From related regulations all the way to monument preservation, monument restorers dedicate their entire lives to making sure that everything about their construction projects is perfectly completed and that no error is present. Our project focusses on a vast multitude of aspects about monument restoration, including the classification of monuments, associations and agencies, and restoration materials, etc. Through visiting the construction projects in person, collecting information through all possible ways, and also consulting experts and professionals, our team aims to present the fullest, most detailed introduction of monument restoration to the world, and we sincerely hope that society will have a better understanding of not only the field itself but also the dedicated heroes behind it. Team Revivers from Taiwan earnestly invites all of you to join us on this journey to witness the rebirth and refurbishment of the precious cultural treasures left to us by our 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:dial-up modem
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):
In the 21st century, our everyday life can no longer function efficiently without computers and the internet. As a result, our school provided us with fiber optic local area network (100MB) and the school’s internet server. Throughout the process of organizing information from all sources and producing articles that correctly present those data, our team used the interactive website Google Docs to discuss online and ensure accuracy and coherence in editing and modifying. Regarding the images used, beside of the pictures captured by our team, we also implemented pictures from Google Images. To respect the intellectual property rights of the picture’s original owner, all incorporated photos that were not produced by our team have already been correctly cited. Last but not least, our team also used Google Sheets as a convenient tool to write out team to-do lists so that our work could be more efficient and thus more enjoyable.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
As a group of tenth graders, it’s our first experience of attending the cyberfair competition. Though the process was fun and meaningful, we had to overcome some obstacles and difficulties. At the beginning, our group members were all muddled up. Though we had looked up to many of the previous projects, we still could not completely understand the concepts. With lots of doubts, we started off slowly and had lots of conflicts due to poor conversations. However, the stressful situation honed our minds. One of the most significant challenges was interviewing the manager of the project. Starting from contacting each constructing companies, we were blocked. Some companies rejected us for safety issues, others were afraid of troubles. However, we are not complaining. With the heart to understand monument restoration, we finally found a monument repairer that is willing to let us interview: Mr. Jian-Fu Wu. Though we had a step towards interviewing, we were still inexperienced about the questions and the equipments. After asking the teacher and searching about how to interview, we were fully prepared. We had successfully finished the interview, and we learned a lot.When gathering materials online, we also faced lots of difficulties. There are numerous monuments in the world, but the technology related to monument restoration is relatively much less. We visited many libraries, looked through the professional materials, even translated the foreign language information to Chinese and English. After putting so much effort in it, we gathered plentiful materials, and this improved our experience of searching for information, which greatly benefit our future abilities of collecting information. After this experience, we all agree that Cyberfair is a challenging competition, but through this competition, we not only overcame difficulties together but also learned many skills.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
Even though monument restoration might sound like a dreamy, almost magical ground, such superlative workmanship is indeed the result of hard work and determination.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
For language, we were writing about the articles introducing monument restoration, interviewing, and writing individual reflections. For math and statistics, we used Google Sheets to organize the replies of the survey, and we analyzed the data. For social studies, we studied the historical sites, planned the research and interview, designed the questions of the survey, and organized the points of interview. For Integrated activities, we actually went on hiking for a historical site, and we integrate the information and results from the online sources, interview, and the survey. All of us were working on completing and organizing the project. For history, we learned more about our homeland country through the research, and we had visited the monuments that recorded the history. For computer science, we learned how to code for the website and some researching skills. For independent study, we learned interview skills, organizing skills, survey design, translating skills, brainstorming, and many others.
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