1. Description of Our Community
Neihu District is located in the eastern area of Taipei City. It is surrounded by mountains except for its south part, which faces Keelung River. The low, central plain of the district forms an inland lake; as a result, the district is named “Neihu”. Its eastern part neighbors with Xizhi City, Taipei County and western part with Zhongshan District. Keelung River, loacted in the south, forms a natural bounary among Neihu , Songshan and Nangang District while Daluntou Mountain and Chishangtian Mountain form its northern boundary with Shinlin District. Neihu is adjacent to mountains and water. Scenic Bishan has a serene environment. The folk custom and practices of Neihu residents also focus on agricultural society and therefore form abundant etiquette and custom on the basis of times and seasons. In order to provide its residents with more recreational space, the City Government turned Fourteen-cent Bei into Tahu Park, a famous spot for mountain climbing and outing, and turned Tabei Lake into Bihu Park as a recreation spot for fishing, strolling and exercising.
2. Summary of Our Project
The rules of playing Woodball are similar to croquet, which was popular during the Tang Dynasty. And Woodball also possesses both the features of modern golf and ancient croquet; meanwhile it is an interesting, entertaining public sports activity which highlights the great importance of etiquette. Woodball was created and elaborately developed by a Taiwanese, Mr. Weng Ming-hui, in 1990. As a result of many enthusiastic people’s help and cooperation, they made this sports activity known and drew people’s attention. And owing to their long-term efforts, they created a brand-new kind of sport worldwide. After two years of continuous experiment as well as improvement, they finally made a practical, convenient set of tools for playing woodball. With a mallet in hand, you can simply take delight in playing the sport while enjoying your conversation. Since it is a sport for people of all ages and serves both the purposes of entertainment and competition, they decided to establish an organization called Chinese Taipei Woodball Association, and they have been promoting it since then in the hope that this new sport will catch on as a modern sport.
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:dedicated connection
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:more than 6
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
Upon receiving the notice of the official document, the director of computer center came to our class, where the students are computer science majors, and discussed with some classmates about Cyber Fair. The first challenge wee met was to find the diligent, responsible, and active teammates to form the team, and we finally chose six members according to the required skills and abilities for the project, each of whom is really interested in the research project with great passion.
We spent quite a while thinking about the topic but didn’t find any suitable one. Inspired by the outstanding competition results of our school woodball team and the fact that Taiwan is the origin of this sport, the director of computer center and us decided to choose “Woodball” as our subject of the project.
In order to keep the project progressing, we scheduled weekly meeting hours to work on it. It is unavoidable, however, that our project was delayed by school intensive quizzes and exams or some academic events, and we could only try to catch up in the following week. We had little problem in teamwork and collaboration since each of our teammates was chosen for his or her specific skill and therefore knew exactly which part of the project to be responsible for.
As for data collection and interview, since there was only little and incomplete woodball information on the Internet, we had to collect data from Journal of Woodball or from the interviews with experts, primarily from the later. Through the interview, we could acquire more information and more in-depth understanding, and we also tried to search on the Web to make our data collection more complete. With the aid of our director and coach, we finally got into contact with ex-president and ex-executive officer of Woodball Association, both of whom were really nice and happy to have an interview with us. We did learn a lot from them!
http://librarywork.taiwanschoolnet.org/gsh2007/gsh4993/english/narrative2.htm
5. Our Project Sound Bite
For some part of the residents in Taiwan and of course including us, woodball is a brand-new sport. During the making process we’ve experienced how interesting woodball is by playing woodball ourselves, and we want to introduce this sport to the residents in Taiwan as well as the world.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
The P.E courses that we’ve taken from junior high to senior high school were similar except for some minor differences. Actually, there were no differences. Therefore, we chose “Woodball”as our subject for this study program. Woodball is usually not listed as a part in P.E. courses in normal schools. In fact, this sport is quite challenging, too! During the process of information collecting and interviewing, we, every team member, have tried to experience what feeling it would be like to strike the woodball! In the Cyber Fair study program, it enabled us to learn some extraordinary activities that we couldn’t learn from school courses. And it is quite distinct for us to interview these figures face to face and experience something that we’re not so familiar with.
http://librarywork.taiwanschoolnet.org/gsh2007/gsh4993/english/narrative3.htm
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