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1. Description of Our Community
Our county Changhua was once referred to by its archaic name “Ban-sen,” and it was during the Qing Dynasty that it was given its current name. Being one of the earlier developed regions, as well as being the county at which the both the mountain and costal lines of the railway system intersect, Changhua was once the most prosperous area of central Taiwan. Chung Shan Elementary School, located around central Changhua City and near such establishments as the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Art Museum, the library, is the first elementary school in Changhua City founded 115 years ago, whose alumni are now everywhere. Atunas was once a local enterprise in Changhua. Faced with the challenge of adapting to radical changes in the industrial ecosystem, the company, as resilient and energetic as the word “tuna” in their company name “Atunas” implies, took advantage of the ostensible crisis as an opportunity and underwent corresponding transformations to become what it is today.
2. Summary of Our Project
Atunas, fully equipped with design and developmental skills adequate cater to all the needs of its customers, is not only the leading brand in Taiwan when it comes to outdoor recreational products whose prospect is to allow everyone to enjoy elegant outdoor recreation, but moreover highly enthusiastic about charitable events and the promotion of outdoor activities both domestically and internationally. For Atunas, profit has never been its sole aim—ever since its founding it has taken upon itself the responsibility of contributing to the betterment of society by annually funding charitable events and mountain climbing groups, by reaching out to and caring for the underprivileged, and by employing above quota mentally and/or physically challenged persons. The most renowned feats of which include the sponsorship, for a duration of three and a half years (2006-2009) the Seven Summits Climb Project, and the project of breaking the Guinness World record for having the most people scale the recorded one hundred summits of Taiwan—all these and more goes to show how Atunas has through the sponsorship non-profit events put to practice their original aim, while letting more people know about itself. We hope, through participation in this feature, to know more about how Atunas contributes to society, the unique characteristics of their sports outfit, the various functions of swimming and hiking gear, and the recipe for a successful enterprise.
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:more than 6
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
Chung Shan Elementary School houses a 10MB fiber-optic academic network which provides us with convenient access to the internet to search for data and fill out our work progress. There are also laptop computers that we may borrow from the school, which allows us to utilize the wireless network in school to log in and update anytime.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
1.Deciding Upon the Direction of Research: We were quite unacquainted with Atunas at first, being intrigued by their sponsorships but clueless as to what exactly on which to conduct a research. After guidance from the teacher and discussions with classmates, we finally came up with a more concrete direction of research. We also talked with our families and friends about the research project so that we could know what content would appeal to most people. 2.Insufficient Common Time: Being all fifth or sixth graders, we all have our respective activities after school, making it unlikely for us to get together and work on our research then; only when we reached the mutual agreement of using our noon breaks as our research time, as well as a few days out of our winter break for intensive research, did we finally settle upon common hours for research. Our teacher helped us set up a Google site so that, on the one hand, we could upload our research contents and discuss, and on the other, we would reciprocally stimulate each other into greater effort by viewing each other’s works. 3.Questions for Interview: We knew about the itinerary for the interview, but it was hard to pin down the questions to use during the interview, fearing that the ones we were to ask would be overly naive or just plain odd. It was a good thing that we went back and consulted our respective families and/or teachers so as to add a layer of depth to our questions.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
The enterprises can promote their brand by means of sponsorship or other contributive acts to society, in the process simultaneously benefitting more people and obtaining greater publicity.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
Over the course of this research project we learned (1) how to collect and organize data, and how to absorb large amounts of data or contextualize pieces of data into relevant passages, which also effected improvement in our writing skills due to the frequency by which we were required to do so; (2) how to apply methods of statistical calculation acquired in mathematics to analyze questionnaires; (3) how to take thematically clear photos, how to make a webpage via utilizing the skills obtained in computer and information class.
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