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1. Description of Our Community
Mingsheng Primary School
Our school is located at Wayao community, Puxin Village, Changhua County. The region has many small factories. Our educational district included the four villages of Wabei, Wazhong, Wanan and Jingkou. To our east lay the biggest township in Taiwan - Yuanlin Town. We are also bordered by Xihu Town at the west, Yongjing Village at the south, and Beiyuda Village at the north. Our community is at the periphery of Puxin Village. Our school was not named after our location. Instead, it was derived from Mingsheng Temple, the religious center of the local residents.
2. Summary of Our Project
?Overview of our research project:
The following lists our procedure:
*Preliminary planning: Choose a number of 6th grade students with a good sense of responsibility and interest in online technology to form the team.
*Gathering information:Carry out extensive reading on information related to mushrooms, and collect additional information from online sources.
*Composing our project proposal:Our project proposal helped to communicate to Qyo company about our intention to participate in the competition and the research methods we would use.
1. Visits: Visit the tourist factory and participate in DIY activities in order to have a preliminary understanding of the industry.
2. Interviews: Schedule a personal interview with General Manager Fang and to ask him questions directly.
3. School presentations: Invite professional staff of the company to our school to make presentations in front of our classmates to share and understand relevant knowledge.
4. Cooking activities: Purchase mushrooms as ingredients for our pizza and provide pizza dough and cheese. Students were asked to make the pizzas themselves so that they would learn about budget management and culinary skills.
*Website production: Weebly was used as a platform for creating our webpages. It would allow simultaneous updating and editing by multiple users, and allow real time webpage previews. Many templates and multimedia tools were also available, making webpage creation easier than ever. Teachers and students who did not have experience writing webpages would be able to establish, download and share websites easily.
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:dial-up modem
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:1
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
?Our online environment:
1. Campus network:
Our school uses the campus network. Team members would use computers during recess or afternoon nap sessions. They would help encourage and keep watch on each other so that the Internet and the computer would serve as useful educational tools instead of being used solely for fun and games.
2. House network:
ADSL or cable modem provided by television companies.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
This was our first time participating in Cyberfair. Nobody had any experience. The project was started close to the end of the semester and it was hard to get everybody's schedule working together. In the end, we made use of the Flexible Class Session on Tuesday afternoon to carry out our interviews and DIY work, and sacrificed our afternoon recess to organize our feedbacks and create our websites. Everybody got really busy. We appreciate the hard work that everybody had put in.
3. Limited background information:
The primary school syllabus did not teach us about the structure and functions of cells. Hence, we did not have a clear definition about what was meant by fungal species. Our skills in webpage composition and editing were not very good either. Hence, we made full use of online tools to help create our webpage, utilizing existing templates to help speed up our webpage creation processes. Although templates allowed us to work faster, we had to sacrifice page layout customizations. Our students spent a long time learning how to operate these programs. Good job, people!
5. Our Project Sound Bite
Standing on the shoulders of giants, we can see farther and higher.We get a lot of experience in the participation.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
Science and Technology
*Learn about the classification of mushrooms.
*Learn about fungal growth and reproduction through growing mushrooms.
*Learn about the ecology and processes of mushroom farming.
*Understand and try out recipes for cooking mushrooms.
*Investigate the importance of environmental protection and corporate responsibility.
Integrated Activities
*Learn about sharing job responsibilities and cooperation, and to come up with creative and innovative ideas when working together towards the same goal.
*Learn how to cooperate and share information with each other during group activities.
2. Major topics relevant to the project
Environmental education
*Investigate whether it is possible to minimize the degree of environmental damage caused by economic development.
*Learn about the importance of environmental protection in the practice of organic farming.
*Understand regional development during visits and field trips.
IT Education
*Learn to use cloud technologies like Google Docs, Picasa, and Weebly, and help reduce paper consumption.
*Create mind-map diagrams to formulate the preliminary framework of our website after discussions and instructor guidance.
Career development
*Learn about different jobs and work responsibilities during visits and interviews.
*Investigate personal interests and preferences during practical activities.
*Learn about good work ethics by observing employee behavior.
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