School: St. Joseph's Institution
    Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

4 students, ages 16-17 worked together to complete this Doors to Diplomacy project on March 23, 2009. They have participated in Doors to Diplomacy in the following year(s): 2006, 2007, 2008

Classes and Teachers: Goh Ih Hwa, Michael, Forlando, Henri, Marshall

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.sji.moe.edu.sg

1. Description of Our Team

Our group’s members are Michael S., Marshall, Forlando A. T., and Henri. We are all secondary four students in the St. Joseph’s institution Infocomm club.

Different skills in Information Technology (IT) do not stop us from doing this project. We know that by doing this, we are helping people to understand better about our water supply and how to sustain it for the future.

As to work efficiently and effectively, we divide ourselves into two groups; Marshall and Forlando are doing the layout while Michael S. and Henri are doing the content. Every week, we meet together again to see the improvement and to discuss problems we met. Ms. Goh and Mr. Wong always monitor and come to help whenever we have difficulties, especially Ms. Goh who helped Marshall in doing the layout with her expertise.

2. Summary of Our Project

Apart from the competition, we aimed that by making this project, we can contribute ourselves to help the earth. Although it discusses only in water issue, we hoped that our project may raise awareness for people who read it and thus encourage them to appreciate water. In the long run, we also hoped for bonding and diplomacy to build up in our community.

We consider water pollution as a global problem as a very serious problem which we need to deal with seriously. Therefore, our project mainly covered all about water pollution. Basically, we divide our topics into the causes of water pollution, its catastrophic effects, also suggestions and possible solutions to this problem.

In our first topic which is the causes, we discuss all activities that take part and contribute in polluting our water. We include the main culprits causing the water pollution, and what they do. We also discuss how small things that we do in our daily life can actually contribute in water pollution.

There is an effect in every cause. In our effects part, we discuss how bad people’s actions can affect the quality of our water. Furthermore, we also discuss the follow-up effects from water pollution and how they can create problems in other aspects of life.

Lastly, we also provide solutions for the problem of water pollution. In this section, we will give information about what people should do and not do. We also explain how people’s cooperation can help a lot in minimizing water pollution. This will develop to diplomacy which in larger scale, countries cooperate together to fight water pollution.

Moreover, we also include interesting facts and quiz on water pollution, and of course relevant pictures.

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:21-50%

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:more than 6

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

We encountered a few problems upon working on this project. The first problem, we can only meet our instructor, Ms. Goh for once a week as she only comes during Mondays. Therefore, we have less time to consult to her in order to solve some technical problems. We also face a difficulty in managing time, balancing between our studies and working on this project. This is because the month in which we are working on this project, February, is also the month of our common test. Therefore, we found it difficult improving this website further because of limited time.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Hard work pays off after some time, but laziness pays off now.

6. How did your activities and research for this Doors to Diplomacy Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?

All of us take geography and chemistry lesson as subjects of our Cambridge “O” level, final examination for secondary students in Singapore. This project, to a certain extent, has helped us to understand more about water around us, about how water is being polluted and its effects. The geography lesson has taught us about the impacts of green revolution, and included some information regarding water pollution. The project itself taught us more about how new innovations that improve the way of farming can pollute our water. For the chemistry lesson, we learn about how chemicals from the air or industrial sewage can react with water and reduce its quality. It involves the redox reaction as well, which can be seen in the reaction of sulphur dioxide with water vapor. Through our research for this project, we figured out various ways to prevent water pollution, keeping our water clean and healthy. This realizes us to be more respectful to our water environment and to apply it in real life. Moreover, by using internet, we can get information from all over the world; learn how to design the layout, e-mail our teacher for help, and almost everything that we need. However, we are careful enough to select the relevant and reliable information, though the information provided from the internet may be wrong and not reliable.

1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your Doors to Diplomacy project?

Computer together with internet are our best friends in doing this project. We surf the internet as it provides us our need of information. However, we simply did not copy all the content, but we got the main ideas first which then we rewrite it. For the process of making background and layout, we used Adobe flash professional and photoshop CS3. In addition, geography book and newspaper sometimes helps to add further information. Our visit to NEwater in Singapore has also been a very helpful journey, since it gave us the idea of how sewage water is being treated and where it is distributed. In fact, NEwater is only one step further from the Water Reclamation Plant.

2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your Doors to Diplomacy project both on-line and in person.

We will send the link of our project to the school community, including the teachers and staffs, through our school email. Hence, with basic information and introduction in the email, we hope that it will raise the awareness of water pollution and water shortage in school community that water may not be always safe and available.

3) What has been the impact of your project on your community?

A change in people’s attitude towards water had actually begun to raise, especially my friends, who had seen my group working in this project. They actually stop wasting water and start to appreciate it, because they learnt from our project that not every person in this world had access to clean water. Besides, students in my school also avoid of throwing rubbish around as they learnt that it can end up in sea and affects the environment.

4) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?

We would like to say big thanks to Ms. Goh, our co-curricular activity teacher, and Yohanes Lim and Christopher Michael Law, our best friends. Without our teacher, we wonder how this project would finish as we would not have any guide to bring us to the end. Moreover, our best friends also helped us, since in the absence of Ms. Goh, we sometimes got unsolved difficulties. Yohanes helped us in technical problems while Christopher assists us in creating designs.