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1. Description of Our Community
Datong Hui and Tu Autonomous County is located in the eastern part of Qinghai Province and lies on the Huangshui River. It is 33 kilometers away from provincial capital Xining with a total area of 3090 km2.It is situated in the Transition Belt between Loess Plateau and Qing-Tibet Plateau. Datong has long history, simple and honest folkway, outstanding people and brilliant culture background. There are about 23 nationalities living here, include Han, Tibetan, Hui, Tu and Monguor. The Datong region is also replete with natural scenic attractions. Every year on the 6th day of the 6th lunar month, the traditional singing festival attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors.
2. Summary of Our Project
Based on the support of school leaders and good facilities for campus network, we organized a team, named ‘Tianyajiaoluo’, and selected the hui’s marriage custom as a subject to participate the project to tell more people about little-known minority habits and characteristics. We enjoy it and learn something from the project. We want to help spread the fine traditional cultures of ethnic minorities.
3. Our Computer and Internet Access
A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:none
B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:none
C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:4-6
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
Our school only has one computer lab containing no more than 30 computers for the use of students only. Students on the team are from impoverished mountain areas. They have no computer at home, let alone using the Internet at home.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
1.Incompatible views Although this was our second time for the Cyberfair Project, we still felt a lack of experience. At first all, there exist different opinions on team members. On the support of school leaders, teachers and students were organized to train on computer. Students were granted to further practice on computer operation, to surf on the Internet. With mutual effort, the harmonious team was formed. 2.Webpage making was a big challenge Most of team members were not excellent on computer operation. It was too hard for us to make webpage, to post the project on the website. We had to make time for both learning use computer and website building. Finally we had everything settled. 3.Inability to gather information by visiting various news sources. We didn’t know anything about news gathering and interview. All of team members were not good at expression. The teachers taught us the interview skills and courtesy, told us how to draw up synopsis. After several days of intensive training, we finally had learnt to do report. 4.Distance and the lack of transport facilities The Hui villages for interview were between two places. The distance was approximated as 30km. We cope up with this problem by communicating the office of teaching affairs. They provided a school bus for us. 5.Managing time between required curriculum and student activities was a bit of a problem. Because of heavy learning burden, we had so little time to take part in extracurricular activities. To complete our project, the team got together for a meeting to decide that teachers and students must exploit all the time, especially the evening self-study and setting-up exercises, to perfect the project. 6.Poor communication 8 members in team are Han people and Tu people. It was hard for us to interview Hui people. Teacher Yan Ya-li, a Muslim woman, helped us communicate with teacher Han Fu-liang who is well posted up in Huis marriage custom. With their help, the interview had been a success and achieved the desired results.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
We are progressing fairly with the Cyberfair project 2010. The project is our common topic. Everybody enjoys it, trying to contribute ideas for unity of content and form of webpage. We spent more than one month digging into information, and then making web page in the classroom all throught the nooning. No mater whatever you are teachers or students, this project has contained a lot of information that fells the charm of folk culture.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
The marriage custom about Hehuang Huis in Qinghai is our subject of the Cyberfair project. It fit perfectly into the curriculum. Not only this time did we have the chance to discover the ethnic minorities’ traditional culture, but also brought it into the campus and class. Students knew what they will never learn in classes. Joining the world competition, our team members learn skills of interview and webpage making.
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