1. Description of Our Community
Our hometown, HePing Village, locates in the area of SiouLin Township in Hualien County, Taiwan. The main river here is called “HePing River”. It used to be called DaZhuoShui River. Its important geographic function is to divide Yilan County and Hualien County; it is the north river in Hualien County. The river faces Pacific Ocean in the east, connects DaJia River in the west, adjoins LiWu River in the south and links to NanAo River and LanYang River in Yilan County in the north.
HePing River is one of the main rivers manages by the central of Taiwan. Its basin includes NanAo Township in Yilan County and SiouLin Township in Hualien County. Its left bank belongs to NanAo Township below DaZhuoShui Bridge; it is adjacent to mountain cliffs and its hinterland is small. The right bank belongs to SiouLin Township and has a broader hinterland.
2. Summary of Our Project
Mankind has relied on water supply for drinking, washing and irrigating since ancient times; therefore, human life and cultural development are both related to “water”.
HePing River locates in the north river in Hualien County in Taiwan. The ancestors of the aboriginal people, Taroko Tribe, have lived here by the waters, inherited the blood and built their homes.
We are a group of Taroko Children caring about the changes of the river in our living environment. Through field trips, interviewing, discovering, solving problems, providing new ideas and the environmental problems of HePing River, we discuss whether the lives of the villagers have changed.
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:1
C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:1
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
School Internet Facility
Currently, our school Internet is fiber broadband, and we have one computer lab. Uploading and downloading data does not cost too much time for students, teachers and parent volunteers to wait. Because we spend most of the time of our extra-curriculum activities in interviewing and experiencing, we make our web pages mostly on Saturdays, and the teachers are responsible for the final adjustment.
Internet Facility at Home
Only few of the team members have dial-up networking or ADSL broadband; therefore, we usually discuss at school and use the facilities at school to log in emails, MSN messenger, Skype and exclusive forum for data transmitting and exchanging our thoughts.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
School principal, administrative units and relative people have assisted us.
Parents helped us to contact the narrators and interviewees.
School administration and teachers helped raising funds for activity expenses.
The teachers provided vehicles for travelling to different places.
Due to the limit of time, we use our lunch break and other free time to do this project.
At the beginning, team members could only surf the Internet and type during extra-curriculum time. During the information courses at school, enhance the abilities of the children to use digital video recorder, digital camera, and digital recorder and transmit data.
The children do not understand tribe language while interviewing the elders in the community. Therefore, we use digital devices to record the sound and images and sort the data and ask parents in the community afterwards.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
Because of the particular living environment, the ancestors of Taroko Tribe lived in the mountains for a very long time and developed a unique life style from Chinese people. They had a very close interaction with the nature. The new generation growing up in modern society has departed from the primitive and happy past time. This research has given the children more topics to talk about with their parents and the seniors. The team has visited Peace (He) Community, leading them from ordinary (Ping) lives to the River (Xi). This environmental action of these Taroko children had a lot of laughter (Xi). The children have seen wonders in their trips (Yu) and remembered (Ji) in their Hearts. (HePing XiYuJi = HePing Adventures)
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
During the process of the research, we tried to develop some basic and important abilities, for examples, browsing project site, relevant books. Through massive reading, we sorted the data we had read and finished our learning notes. While writing progress report, we reviewed our learning process. When we made the interview record, we learned how to communicate and behave, how to use effective wordings to ask our interviewees and wrote the points into our articles. Moreover, through this process, we experienced the relationship between natural ecology of HePing River and the local society. We have developed the spirit of science research and the ability of project research and utilized the effective methods we found to solve problems in life. For examples, the string of traditional Jew’s harps causes the pain of hands while playing it; therefore, we try to improve the structure of holding the string to ease the pain. During the process of the project, we learned the ecology and characteristics of rivers and the methods and attitudes of the aboriginal people to utilize the nature sustainably. We understood that we had to appreciate, respect, treasure the gifts from the nature, and sustain this wonderful land while facing the environmental changes.
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