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1. Description of Our Community
Jianqing Village is located in the center of Wanrung, Hualien County, with Silin Village in the north, Wanrung Village in the south, Nanping Village, Fenglin Township in the east, and Central Mountain Range in the west. Jianqing Village is the smallest village in the township where residents are unsophisticated and hospitable. Approximately more than 90% of the residents in the village are Truku people. The Truku people are now highly populated in Sioulin Township and Wanrung Township in Hualien County, and a few of them reside in other villages, Lishan Village in Chuosi Township and three villages in Jian Township – Chingfeng, Nanhua, and Fusing. In terms of the labor structure in Jianqing Community, most of the residents engage in agricultural, industrial, and service industries. There is no specific industrial operation in the community, and the labor forces have to look for working opportunities outside the community. As a result, the family functions in the community are incomplete, resulting in many educational problems and the population’s sense of loss. Therefore, the role and status of our school are particularly important. In addition to taking into account the physical and psychological development of children in the community, our school should also attach importance to the thematic courses of local culture and cooperate with private and government units, in order to systemically preserve the culture of Truku people. Our school established a cultural club to explore and investigate the culture, and the research projects of many themes have been completed and published, including Truku weaving, Truku rituals, Truku hunting, and Truku facial tattoo. Our school instructs students in basic academic abilities through education process, which also enables them to indirectly obtain abundant cultural intelligence.
2. Summary of Our Project
The special topic is to introduce Truku traditional music and dance. Through the sharing of the interviewers and by words and images to record Truku traditional music and dance, in order to continue Truku culture. The types of Truku traditional music include ancient tune, folk custom and casual. Truku traditional instruments consist of tatuk, lubug,pgagu and ubug spat qnawal. Generally speaking, a song and lyrics are not treated separately in the music of the indigenous people. So when the elders of the Truku tribe instruct the young people in singing, the melody and the words are always taught together, rather than practicing one first and then adding the other. Traditionally, Truku dance is dominated by the female members of the tribe. The women’s dances are a relaxed, spontaneous affair. The participants are humming improvised melodies as they slowly gather momentum, performing in an impromptu fashion. Male dancers may also be involved, but the male steps are much less complex, featuring only simple back and forth or side to side moves. The male performance mostly serves just as an accompaniment to the women’s dance. The theme is to study Truku traditional music and dance in our school this year. People can gain more knowledge about the traditional Truku music and dance by internal trainings and interview aboriginals. Also, videos and messages have been uploaded to Internet and can be viewed by people around the world in any minute. In the long run, more and more people could acquaint with Truku rich cultural connotations by inheritance, respect, education and emotions.
3. Our Computer and Internet Access
A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:less than 20
B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:1
C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:2-3
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
Our school supports wireless Internet access, and the computer classroom is equipped with high speed fiber broadband. In Taiwan, which is now a country with advanced information technology, most Internet access problems have been solved. Our school upgraded the computer information technology equipment in 2011, and purchased equipment for interviews, such as video cameras, sound recorders, and digital cameras. Students have a complete set of interview tools in groups. Our school has received outstanding awards in the Cyberfair for the past few years. One major reform is to include the Cyberfair project into the school curriculum planning, which teaches students about the use of information media, interview skills, upload of research records, and webpage making in class sessions. The school has established community websites at the Ministry of Education and Facebooks, allowing students groups to upload afterthoughts, reports, and comments. By integrating the curriculum, hardware, …
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
(1) Technical difficulties: Solution: the course content strengthens the instruction on the use of video camera, digital camera, and sound recorders, as well as file transmission. In February, lecturers have been invited to teach related courses, which have benefited the students. If these works cannot be arranged into hands-on courses, the teachers and students would share the workload. The teachers would transfer the files to the computer, and organize and convert the files, whereas the students are responsible for transcribing the interviews.
(2) Reaching consensus: Solution: the school has established a teacher organization for research projects, which integrates the internal and external manpower, materials, and funding resources. The organization holds regular work reviews and forums. Building mental toughness and seeking school administrative supports are very important. Without mental toughness, the team members would feel exhausted, and be unable to finish the works; without administrative support, the teachers and students would be working alone, and eventual be exhausted.
(3) Project planning: Solution: in order to complete this project and maintain the educational features of this school, besides establishing teachers’ learning community, we asked other staffs to serve as the project head, expecting the project head to lead the research team with a different leadership style and perspective. The teacher community has established trust mechanism, and the teachers took turns to be the project head. The experienced teachers would also share their experiences.
(4) Language and expression: Solution: the teachers served at the interviewees for practice, and instructions were given afterwards. If the students still had problems during the actual interviews, guidance was given immediately, and the teachers would explain the students’ situations to the interviewees. The transcripts would be reviewed and corrected by the teachers.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
To break the existing classroom learning pattern and take the students to walk about in the community. We do not want seriousness and standards, broken knowledge and memorized memories. What we want is a rational and emotional attitude, an integrated unity of practicality and humanity. Marking culture from the perspective of educational activities, we create a local style and culturally innovative learning environment. We share this experience with other countries by going through this thematic study and participating in this Cyberfair.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
(1) Language areas: The team members raised their listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills when the students collected information on the internet and organized them into the mental maps of the interview outline and when participating in actual interview written documentation. Furthermore, the club gives priority to the study of Aboriginal Truku culture, by interviewers’ sharing and recording of traditional music and dance culture of Truku witch doctors by words and videos, Truku culture can thus be continued. Learning is through information network system and multi-ethnic language communication and contact, and can be said to be an active course for the language area learning ability index. (2) Social fields and combined activities: In this Cyberfair project the students, through the internet and interviews, can simply describe the living environment from past to present and the migration of the Sinbaiyang Tribe. Students can also describe the location of the Truku traditional music and dance in Truku areas and in the vicinity near the school. From the records of the interviewer, we better understand each village’s unique cuisine and the relationship of community interaction, and the background and causes for prosperity and decline. While experiencing the Truku witch doctors, the students rationally communicate and understand what kind of meaning or story these traditional medical rites represent. These learning process could not be experienced or participated in the classroom, thus this them research process is the best example of a course in social area learning. (3) Information Education: Each club member has been trained in small group cooperation to find the suitable website sources, audio and video recording files of completed interviews, downloading and reading files, and transfer or establish simple a file library and manage information. Members can fully understand network use and basic internet operation (including send and receive email, …
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