School: The Hualien Ho-Ping Primary school
    Hualien, Taiwan, ROC

11 students, ages 10-12 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 14, 2011. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2011

Classes and Teachers: He Xin-Ying?La Han Lo Xin?Fang Yu-Ting?Yao Zhang

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.hpps.hlc.edu.tw

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.

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

Computers, Searching data, writing research reports, making web pages Internet, Searching data, uploading research reports, using emails, making web pages Computer Software, Searching data, writing research reports, making web pages Scanner, Sorting paper references Digital camera, Taking pictures of work and interviews Digital recorder, Recording interviews

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

The purpose of the project is to let people understand the ecology of HePing River and the relationship between natural environment and the tribe. In addition to that, we would also like people to know the variety of the river and how valuable it is. In the end, we hope this action can sustain the possibility to environmental protection.

In this project research, every team member fulfilled every task by division of labors, through dividing into teams, discussion, collecting and sorting data, and conducting interviews together, and we learned how to apply the knowledge we gained into life. We tested what we had learned in life. Every interview and field trip, we found that we focused more, our asking skills became more sophisticated, and team members encouraged each other to make things more perfect. More importantly, we cared about every detail now; whereas, we were careless at the beginning, which made the interviewees feel that we were serious and sincere.

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

Our school is located in Siou-Lin Township, Hualien County. Most students live near HePing Village. Due to development of the environment, rivers near HePing Tribe hence got polluted. Through this project research, we the deep relevance of the river to the residents. In early times, it was the water supply to the residents and a play ground. HePing River played an important role. 

In our field trip, we could not find detailed data of HePing River, which forced us to ask the elders in the communities. Although that made our research more difficult, we gathered and sorted our problems and then we found out how influential HePing River was. This motivated both students and the teachers. We felt the expectation of the river from our interviewees, the beautiful vision on this land. Our research may not be great, but it arouses the happy memories with the river of the residents, which is the greatest reward we have in the research.

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

We want to thank our principle and all the teachers who have helped us in our schools. They spent lots of time to give us information and to help us to finish all the works we need to do. Teacher Yao, he teach us using the computer skillfully. We also want to thank all the people with whom we had the interviews.They are happy about that we work on the project related to local Attractions. They think we are doing an important thing. We are very grateful to some student parents who had been giving us a hand in helping us connect with people whom we want to visit and how to do a good interview. Thanks for the help of these people.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

Although we do not have the relevant knowledge of the nature environment and geography of HePing River. With the instructions from the teachers and experiences of collecting data from this period of time, it grew on us. We understand more that “HePing River” is not merely a small stream near our village. It includes the mutual memories of people getting along with nature. In order to learn this new concept, we collected a lot of data and visited the places, which made us learn greatly and love our homeland more.