CyberFair Project ID: 7615

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International Schools CyberFair Project Narrative
Title: Impact of Heavy School Bags
Category: 2. Community Groups and Special Populations
URL: http://www.impactofheavyschoolbags.weebly.com
Bibliography: http://impactofheavyschoolbags.weebly.com/references.html

School: Sekolah Seri Bintang Selatan
    Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia

6 students, ages 11 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 20, 2013. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2013 first time

Classes and Teachers: En Halim, En Rashdan, Ms Kiren Kaur

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.sksbs.edu.my

Project Overview

1. Description of Our Community

We are students from Sekolah Kebangsaan Seri Bintang Selatan Malaysia. Our school is in the center of Kuala Lumpur. We are known as The Smart School because our school is equipped with computers. Not all school has these facilities. Also we are lucky because in our school, we have lockers where most kids place their books.

2. Summary of Our Project

Our project is focuses on the impact of heavy school bags. From our research for the past few weeks, we learnt that this problem is infact a global issue. Many parents all over the world are worried about the load their children carry to school.

We love to go to school as this is where we get education, make friends with so many different races(multi racial) and play all type of games.We also get the chance to take part in various activities. However most of us just don't like carrying heavy bags.

According to our research, we found that many diseases starts from carrying heavy school bags. There are numerous articles that showed what the impact will be on our bones if we don't take actions.

We also interviewed an orthopedic Specialist and he also gave his views.

So lets all read the solution that may be useful for all kids in the world.

We also had awareness campaign for parents in the recent Parent Teacher Association meeting. The role of parents in important because younger kids need help from parents to pack their bags according to the time-table. Thus their understanding of this problem is very important.

In addition to it we also carried out various campaigns in the school to educate students on the correct methods and how to over come this problem.

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

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

Selecting the topic is not easy as this is the first time. But when we surveyed in January we saw so many young kids(age 7 onwards) carrying heavy school bags. We also saw when kids go to their classes after assembly, they need to drag their bags on the stairs. So seeing this we decided as team, with all respective teachers to go for this topic.

Time constraint in meeting up. Even most of us are from the same class, we had problem meeting. This is because some of us are school players and now is the time where tournament begins. So we decided to meet on weekends to decide our job task.

First time learning to design webpage. We have never designed a webpage before but we had attended Animation class with Ms Kiren Kaur, from YOUNG ANIMATORS. But with weekend class we managed to pick bits and pieces.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

This competition is very challenging. But we are all excited about it. Importantly, we Must convey the message on the Impact of Heavy School Bags effectively so everyone can play a part in preventing more damage to our spinal.

6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?

Since this is a problem concerning the health of kids, we believe our project has managed to fully address the problem collectively with the participation of all students, parents and teachers.

The final outcome which we saw after implementing the solutions is very encouraging.

Apart from this, by participating in the research of this project we managed to learn various IT skills. We learnt to collect data from the internet, use varous softwares to create the website and animations.

We feel that this method of doing research using the Internet was very beneficial in obtaining a better understanding.

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Project Elements

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

We used many computers, a digital camera, scanners and many softwares to complete our project. We used Microsoft Office softwares to do our data input, we used Adobe Flash to do our animations and we used the YouTube to embed the videos into our website.

We also did oral interviews with parents, teachers and a medical speacialist.

We feel that these tools were very useful in completing our project. The internet particularly was a great reference point.

We are lucky that all the tools were easily available from our school.

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

Our team took up the role of doing the research by being representatives to make everyone aware of this problem.

We feel that we are the right people for this because we ourselves face this problem daily.

To highlight this problem we presented this issue to all parents in the PTA, one to one meetings with some parents, interview with teachers, and had many campaigns to create awareness e.g. by placing posters at various places in the school.

We interviewed a doctor (orthopedic) to get his input to understand the problem better and relay his advise to everyone.

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

Our completed website has made people to understand the whole problem better and how to counter this problem.

The feedback we received particularly during the survey from parents was very encouraging.

We now advise all parents of new students who join the school to view our website and understand the whole issue and review all the recommended solutions.

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

We are very grateful to our Headmaster En Azahari who gave us strong support from the beginning to undertake this CyberFair project.

We also wish to thank all the teachers who came forward to give their views and recommendations.

The support of all parents interviewed was great.

Lastly but not the least we wish to thank Ms Kiren Kaur of Young Animator Technologies who gave a lot of guidance in completing the website as well as the animations.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

This project has made us all very much closer. We feel we are truly the ambassadors of the school in highlighting this project.

We were surprised that all the fellow students really looked up on us when we presented this project.

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View our CyberFair Project (Project ID: 7615)

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