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1. Description of Our Community
As an old saying goes that “Three prosperous towns: Tainan, Lukang and Xinzhuang”, Xinzhuang had once been the pivotal center of politics, cultural education and economy in northern Taiwan over 300 years back. The prosperity of this port city was not merely part of the history, but had left a good deal of records and anecdotes behind. Even if it has been transformed from the old agricultural society to nowadays’ metropolitan, people can still perceive the sentiment-triggering traces from some previous temples and traditional walks of life. Embracing a long history, Xinzhuang’s drum culture has prospered under the cooperative support from city and county governments. In 2006, Xinzhuang International Drum-Art Festival was conducted for the first time and won a wide attention and applause immediately. Thereafter, this festival was held each year, of which all wonderful performances never let the audience down and further fuelled the passion of Xinzhuang locals. Xinzhuang International Drum-Art Festival has preserved and promoted the local drum culture and stimulated local people about the beauty of drum art. It does not stop here, though. Furthermore, this festival has manifested the wondrous achievement of cultural growth in Xinzhuang and elevated this old city onto the global stage, demonstrating its energetic spirit of a cultural city to international communities through a succession of international cultural exchanges.
2. Summary of Our Project
Once the boss of a burger shop and volunteer of a fire brigade, Tsai Wen-ju switched to a totally different career a decade ago and became an executive officer of XINDRUM later. A legendary figure in the eyes of the locals, Mr. Tsai has put forth utmost efforts to promote the drum culture in Xinzhuang. With a strong conviction that kids who learn to play music will surely behave well, he established the Si Xian Drum Team for the Si Xian Elementary School in 2000 in order to take roots into the soil of campus. Two years later, he founded XINDRUM in the hope of materializing his calling in life with a philosophy that “the children should play drums in the hometown”. In order to show the drum culture of Xinzhuang to the world, Mr. Tsai not only leads XINDRUM’s members to participate in major occasions by government agencies, but grasps the golden opportunity of the yearly Xinzhuang International Drum-Art Festival, in which he has worked hard to make the traditional drum of “Xiang Ren He” known to and recognized by the global stage through international exchanges. Even with several outstanding achievements, including his receiving Social Education Contribution Award and XINDRUM’s being granted with the Taipei County’s Traditional Art Award for Children, Mr. Tsai never forgets about his mission of promoting drum education and comes over to school to teach pupils to play drums or to deliver a speech as humbly and modestly as before. Leading his members of XINDRUM to join in New Year Drum Playing Event and doing everything with all his might and main in Xinzhuang International Drum-Art Festival, Mr. Tsai has for long demonstrated the devotion and nobility in his endeavors for drums promotion. It is no exaggeration to say that Mr. Tsai is a leading contributor who made Xinzhuang’s drum culture known to the bigger world and recognized by the global community.
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: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):
We have learned through the Global School Net event that “web is without boundary”, which gives us quick access to new information. In this process of Global School Net, we have got to acquire some techniques regarding webpage construction and production, and grasp the skills to employ Photo Impact to produce photos and Word to integrate data. Though the working process was rather painstaking, but we did get computer-related knowledge and increase information capability step by step.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
During the process of competition, we have encountered a great deal of predicaments, among which the time constraint ranked highest. We had a little more than four months to prepare, coupled with the extremely tight schedule of the executive officer Tsai Wen-ju; hence the activities we arranged for Mr. Tsai, including interviews with Mr. Tsai, inviting him to give a speech to our school, and teaching us, all laypersons, how to beat the drum and savor the fun of playing drums were all crammed into a tight timeframe. Not to mention that we had to spend some of the weekends to observe the way Mr. Tsai taught his team members to play and conducted interviews with some members to voice their opinions of and feelings about Mr. Tsai. It was rather busy and we all felt as if we were running against the time. We didn’t garner enough information on the venue of activity, so we had to spend a great deal of time in collecting information that is needed for finishing the report at hand. Besides, the data concerning the executive officer was bulky without assortment, and we had to classify and choose before writing reports. Fortunately we sorted out the clues and points after constant discussion and collaboration, and finally produced the content of the webpage in a rational style.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
Through this research project did we have the chance to notice such a person as Mr. Tsai who has committed his time and effort to hometown’s culture and art in his own way. We shall pay tribute to him by developing ourselves as the one of the seeds to disseminate the beauty of hometown. We hope that through the introduction on our webpage, more and more people would follow the steps of the executive officer Mr. Tsai and join in the promotion campaign of Xinzhuang’s drum art.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
During the process, this research project has equipped us with the capability of drafting a theme, devising a research plan, implementing the work of research, and completing the course of research. We have created a structure comprising 7 fields of curriculum, hoping to realize the spirit of Grade 1-9 Curriculum through this project. In the process of this research project, we have to learn how to draft the outline of interviews, polish the records of interviews, collect and compile information and write the work progress report and so forth—all the experiences not only increase our writing skills, but may make us better listeners and develop our communication skills as well. Through this research on local cultural leaders, we have acquired the opportunity to know more about the executive officer Tsai Wen-ju as well as the unique drum art of our hometown, Xinzhuang, so as to get to know the features of the hometown better. In this research project, posters of speech or ocean drum DIY class were all made by us. In addition, we have designed the button chart and illustrations with our artistic skills so as to render the webpage a more refined view. To make the artistic design more distinguished is our hope. We have learned through the Global School Net event that “web is without boundary”, which gives us quick access to new information. In this process of Global School Net, we have got to acquire some techniques regarding webpage construction and production, and grasp the skills to employ Photo Impact to produce photos and Word to integrate data. Though the working process was rather painstaking, but we did get computer-related knowledge and increase information capability step by step.
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