|
1. Description of Our Community
Our local community is in the province of Alberta, which is located in western Canada. Our province is made up of six naturals regions that were built by nationalities from all over the world which created a multicultural community.
2. Summary of Our Project
Our web project is one that connects everyone around the world to our community. As an ESL school, we have a large number of people that are new to Alberta or have family in other countries around the world. As a class we wanted to connect our families with those back home or help newcomers to Canada learn about Alberta, a place that we call home. We wanted to take the things we were learning in school and share them with others, so they could see everything Alberta has to offer and what makes Alberta unique. This website also provides information for visitors.
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):
Most of the students in our class, we are the first generation in our families to be using computers on a regular biases at home and in school. We are often teaching our parents how things work. Using computers and other forms of technology is something new and exciting for us that we all took with great responsibility.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
We are a big group trying to put together a website about one topic and even though we worked in small groups we had to overcome the challenge of web building. Using Google sites gave us the ability to be able to work on more then one page at a time, but having five people wanting to add information and create a look on that one paged caused a lot of arguing that made us learn of patience and compromising. We also had to share the 22 computers with 10 other classes so we could only take them out when it was our turn. We also have some students in our class that have little knowledge of English and we had to work together to help them succeed too and feel a part of our team. Another issue that came up was that although we all have computers at home some people did not have equal access to internet at home. Ms. Hamill, our teacher is also new to technology and when we wanted to create a our commercials, we learned to help each other and got further help from Ms. Reid, our technology adviser.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
This projected gave us a great opportunity to bring purpose to our learning by connection our community here in Alberta to our communities in our home countries. It also showed us that we can help others learn about our province and that anything is possible when we work as team.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
This project was able to work alongside our curriculum. Students were able to appreciate the diversity of elements pertaining to geography, climate, geology and palaeontology in Alberta, appreciate the variety and abundance of natural resources in Alberta appreciate the environmental significance of national and provincial parks and protected areas in Alberta, appreciate how land sustains communities and quality of life, and demonstrate care and concern for the environment through their choices and actions. Students learned to demonstrate the skills of compromise in order to reach group consensus, determine the reliability of information, filtering for point of view and bias, and express opinions and present perspectives and information in a variety of forms, such as oral or written presentations, speeches or debates.
| 
