CyberFair Project ID: 5294

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International Schools CyberFair Project Narrative
Title: Bukovina - Heaven on Earth
Category: 5. Local Attractions (Natural and Man-Made)
URL: http://bukovina.lineages.ro/
Bibliography: http://bukovina.lineages.ro/bibliography.html

School: National 'Eudoxiu Hurmuzachi' College
    Radauti, Bukovina, Romania

4 students, ages 16-18 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 19, 2008. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2005, 2006, 2007

Classes and Teachers: 1

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://

Project Overview

1. Description of Our Community

The community in which we live in is one with friendly, welcoming people, that still respect the old customs and traditions, even being renown for these characteristics. The people here have always been hard workers, hearty and eager to help even a stranger. The landscape seems to be taken out of fairy-tales, with high mountains, imposing respect and admiration, and wide valleys in which we can see images of the perfect communion between man and nature, images heaven like, where everything is at it’s place, images of perfection. So, the community we chose, Bukovina, isn’t just a local one, it's part of a bigger ensemble of goodness and of what we now call: 'the specific Romanian warmth”.

2. Summary of Our Project

The spark that lead to the idea of constructing this website what the school roadtrip we made last year, visiting the local monastaries of Bukovina. We all knew we were living in a very beautiful region of our country, but we never really just enjoyed this, and this was the point when we discovered it’s true value, it’s traditions and beauties. At that point we realized that if we, locals, knew so little about this charming land that really deserves to be promoted on a larger scale, so we decided to do something about it. Also, we noticed that people from abroad know so little about our country and have formed wrong opinions about Romania. We wanted to prove that we have reason to be proud, to let them see that for themselves, and think that this website provides the infinite amount of 'audience' that Bukovina deserves. This was also a way of getting to know the area in which we live better than before, and so the idea of our project emerged, the idea of „Bukovina – Heaven on Earth”.

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):

The computers in our school have represented a sponsorship from the Ministry of Research and Education.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

Bukovina is not only a vast geographical area; it includes many incontestable proofs of nature’s greatness, of tradition and culture. What seemed harder for us was the integration of what is more important, this being an extremely choicely process, because of the numerous sources of information. Another issue was the fact that, although we are very close friends and love working as a team, it was a little difficult for us to communicate, considering the fact that we are in different classrooms and even different generations, and the time needed to prepare for the school classes is somewhat long. Still, the fact that we had to sacrifice a part of our spare time was not a problem, because we loved working on the project, although we would have wanted to have more time at our disposal.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Bukovina is a place worth seeing and our project intends to prove it on a larger scale. This project gave us the opportunity to learn new things and to try and unite the ones that wanted to know more about other places, Bukovina in particular. Getting to know more about Bukovina, talking to different people about the theme, we managed to know other persons better too, making us feel like we were a part of the community more than any other time. The essence of our website may even be a patriotic desire to promote our country as one with magical scenery. As Heaven is often described as peace, calm, beauty, balance, what we noticed is that these can be found in this display of Bukovina, which give us the right to call it „Heaven on Earth”.

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

Our Cyberfair project describes our local community, Bukovina. The school was very supportive and offered to help answer the historical and geographical questions we had about this area. But in the end, the most important part was teamwork, collaboration, understanding each other’s needs and reaching compromises. We now better understand the community we live in, the people here and the vast history our country has, we learned more aspects concerning the culture here. The Internet played an important role in our research phase of the project, because it’s easy to use and provides you with lots of useful information. Also, we directly saw the benefits of a solid education provided by the educational system, because we would have never gotten this far without the support of our school, and that of our coordinating teacher, who always encouraged us, helped us, and given us advice but most importantly, believed in us.

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Project Elements

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

To complete our Cyberfair project we used our home computers (4), and the ones from school, IBM computers, we used telephones, because we needed to communicate with one-another, scanners for the information and pictures on the website, cameras for pictures of what we wanted to show to the world, books, articles, went to the local museum and even had an oral interview with Miss Karli, a teacher at one of the local schools here, and a representative of the Peace Core. The software we used consisted mainly of Notepad, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Flash, these tools being our personal property or the or property of the school.

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

When developing our project, we needed to be well informed about what we were doing, and needed to make sure that our opinion is, as much as possible, a correct one. So, when conducting research, we had the opportunity to talk to different people about our theme and ask them what they thought. Being really involved in the project, we talked to our friends, to some of our teachers and even to some locals about our attempt to promote Bukovina. We also talked to Miss Karli, a representative of the Peace Core, and a teacher here and the Prior of the Putna Monastery. The people we discussed the issue of promoting Bukovina with were impressed, and very supportive, encouraging us to continue what we were trying to do.

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

Through our “Bukovina – Heaven on Earth Project” what we tried to do was to make a difference, to promote this area, to inform not only the people around us, but also the people thousands of miles away. We think our page helped other people by presenting various aspects about Bukovina, not only geographical or historical information, but also cultural and economical aspects, changing many people’s perspectives. We were very pleased to talk to other people about what we were trying to do, we talked to many of our teachers, friends and colleges about it, we asked for their opinions about our web site, and they were always happy to give as important pieces of advice.

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

In order for us to get so far, it’s obvious we needed a lot of help. Besides our friends and our very concerned teacher, we had to ask other people for help. This way, we would like to thank Miss Karli for accepting to talk with us in an open interview, the Prior of the Putna Monastery, for telling us what we needed to know about the religious aspects and for letting us post some of the pictures provided by putna.ro, Acsani Dragos for the pictures and information available on bukovina.ro, and all the people that agreed to talk to us and tell us what Bukovina means to them.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

. I think we can all say this project was a very important part of our lives, especially in the last few weeks, simply because we were all concerned with finding out as many things about our the place we live in as possible. We are pleased to say that is has been a wonderful opportunity for us, that we learned many new and interesting things about our country’s culture and traditions, making us more and more interested about the subject. We are happy to say that we also got to know the people of our community better, because we never thought that we would benefit from so much support from, what was until the time, complete strangers, it made us see that the people around us are kind and friendly and always willing to give a helping hand. This has been an extraordinary experience that made us feel integrated in our community and made us improve many of our skills.

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View our CyberFair Project (Project ID: 5294)

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