CyberFair Project ID: 7766

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International Schools CyberFair Project Narrative
Title: Encountering Chinese Music @ Yu-Tsai
Category: 8. Local Music and Art Forms
URL: http://librarywork.taiwanschoolnet.org/gsh2014/gsh7766/index.htm
Bibliography: http://librarywork.taiwanschoolnet.org/gsh2014/gsh7766/biography.htm

School: Yu-Tsai Billingual Elementary School
    New Taipei City, , Taiwan

9 students, ages 11-12 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 8, 2014. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2010,2011,2012,2013

Classes and Teachers: Elaine Hsu, Christina Chen, Sunny Peng, Tina Yang, Daniel Wang, Stuart Dawson, Philip Dawson

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.ytes.ntpc.edu.tw/index.asp

Project Overview

1. Description of Our Community

Our school resides in Yonghe District, New Taipei City. Located near the southeast part of the Taipei Basin, it is linked by three bridges over the Xin-Dian River. Yonghe is as prosperous as Taipei City, and it is well known for its numerous small shops and attractions such as Korean Street, Weekend Farmers' markets, Yang San Lang's Museum and World Religions Museum.

2. Summary of Our Project

The TCO Civic Orchestra was formed on the 1st of May 1993. The members of the orchestra are Chinese orchestra graduates and other music lovers. After a long period of guidance from the professional TCO and training with a conductor, the members of the civic orchestra matured into great musicians. They organise regular tours and play at community concerts each year. They have also been invited to play at the Taipei Traditional Arts Festival. From the beginning of its formation, the TCO Civic Orchestra has planned and played in a series of concerts called The Chorus of the Yellow River, Love for all seasons, Loving the Oldies and others. In 1995 with the Xitian Chinese Puppet Opera Society, the TCO created the first opera performance of Wusong and the Tiger to the accompaniment of live a Chinese Orchestra. From 1998 onwards the TCO Civic Orchestra were invited to perform abroad. Their travels took them to Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Korea. And 2009 saw the orchestra perform in Kaohsiung at the Bei-Gao Performing Arts Festival. Looking to the future, the TCO Civic Orchestra hopes to expand the influence of Chinese orchestral music. They want to inspire others to love the same music, and participate in more performances. They hope that more people will continue to help the spark of Chinese music continue to shine. When doing research for the cyberfair, we thought the most important thing was sharing, sharing knowledge, sharing feelings, and sharing observations. This year we were drawn towards the TCO orchestra’s music. We wanted to take the music, culture and community involvement of the TCO and share it with even more people. We also hope that by doing the cyberfair, we can grow and discover more.

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:more than 6

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:1

E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):

We utilized our school's ample computers to access the Internet: there are 50 computers in the computer lab, 4 computers in the library, each classroom also has their own computer and all of these have direct access to the Internet. Having convenient access to these resources really helped us in facilitating our projects' needs and getting work done.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

1. Assigning jobs The long winter vacation happened to fall within the 5 month period of this project. Because families often have plans during this break, it was extremely difficult to find the shared time necessary to work on the project. As such, each team's head had to delegate jobs and responsibilities to each team member (cleverly done before the break started), and everyone worked together to seamlessly complete all tasks and assignments. 2. Data Collection The TCO has been running since 1993. They attended concerts big and small, at home and abroad. However, a lot of the information and photos from that time are not well archived and so we asked the Civic Orchestra to provide some. We then sorted, scanned and archived the materials which was very complex. But after everyone worked hard at it and the TCO’s performances were ready to be presented. 3. Interview For the cyberfair we had to interview many members of the Civic Orchestra. We’re a little introverted and not great at speaking to strangers. Luckily some of the cyberfair team had done interviews before. After lots of practice and official interviews, we became more and more confident. The hardest part of doing the cyberfair was meeting strangers face to face and interviewing them, but we had to overcome this in order to understand and get the materials we needed.

4. Working together For this project we had to interview a lot of people. Every time we finished the interviews, it would take us an hour or so to type up a 10 minute interview. So we split up into teams of two. One person would listen to the interview and then other person would type. Working together meant we could finish it much more quickly.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

When doing research for the topic, we discovered that the Civic Orchestra members were like a family. For an orchestra to make each performance perfect, it must be able to work together as a team, just like we needed to when doing research. We must allocate and share tasks for us to be successful. We saw the team effort that the TCOCO puts into its performances, and selfless way they taught us about classical Chinese music and instruments. Also they allowed us to be there to record them practicing which was a very precious and rare moment.

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

Language Through the collecting of data, transcribing of interviews and writing of reports we vastly improved our writing skills. We also had the chance to improve our listening and communication skills in the interview process Math We used Excel to collate statistics on everyone's performance Art and Humanities We created graphics using computer programs as well as drawing by hand. We also used image processing software to edit photographs for our website. In addition, our theme was about music and we were able to listen to and admire the beautiful voices of the TCOCO Science and Technology We made full use of computer graphics software, digital photography, video cameras and cellphones to record our progress. Finally, we also used web publishing and image processing software to complete out website.

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Project Elements

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

Using Information Technology What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your CyberFair project? *Selection of Cyberfair Members Hardware:Camera,Microphone, Software:Power Point,PA Machine *ID Badge Design Hardware:Camera Software:PhotoImpact *Surveys Hardware:Camera Software:Word,Excel,GoogleForm,PhotoImpact *Events Hardware:Camera,Cellphone *Debate and Analysis Hardware:Camera Software:Moodle,Word,Seeing Reason,Visual Ranking *Debate Hardware:Camera?Printer Software:InternetExplorer,Word,Showing Evidence *In School Promotion Hardware:Projector,Presentation Pen,Microphone Software:InternetExplorer,PowerPoint,GoogleForm *Community Promotion Software:PhotoImpact *Collating Data Hardware:Scanner Software:InternetExplorer,Word *Website Production Software:Word,InternetExplorer,SharePointDesign,Dreamweaver *Web Design Software:PhotoImpact?PhotoShop?Flash?PhotoScape *Image Editing Hardware:Scanner Software:PhotoScape?PhotoImpact?PhotoShop *Copies of Data Hardware:USB Drive?Hard Drive?CD Copier?CD

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

Role of Ambassador 1.Interaction With School Staff and Students 2.Interaction With TCOCO 3.Interaction With the Local Community Team collaboration During this activity we learnt an important lesson; unity is strength. We learnt that team cooperation is important and that we need allocate tasks. After that if someone is having difficulty, we need to help them solve the problem and work together. When we differing opinions, everyone can adopt each other position that way we can overcome even the most difficult of tasks. Also we saw through the TCOCO that only by working together can they produce beautiful music and only by working hard to practice can they successfully play at the National Concert Hall.

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

Before meeting the TCOCO, we didn’t really know much about classical Chinese music. But after the interviews, rehearsals, lunchtime broadcasts and professional performances, we gained a much better understanding of what classical Chinese music is. The Civic Orchestra’s members all very patiently taught about music. Learning to play classical Chinese instruments made us very happy. We also got to see the passion they have and that made us even more determined to complete the cyberfair project.

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

Taipei Chinese Orchestra Civic Orchestra in preparation for our school activities, we called the Yu-Tsai concert ask if we use the space in our campus. We designed several questionnaires to analysis the citizens how much know the TCOCO . Not only school Activities but we participated the community concert with TCOCO and interviewer the head of community to tell us what feeling after that community concert. About this project, the member of the TCOCO taught us to know the traditional instrument and gave us a lot of comments about our project. We were very appreciate the member of the TCOCO and the all be accepted that interviewed from us.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

Discoveries 1.Many Hands Make Light Work: We discovered that working together as a team is really important. If the cyberfair team relied entirely on the efforts of one person, it wouldn’t be successful. Just like the orchestra, they need everyone’s cooperation and hard work to produce a wonderful concert. 2.Problems of clarity: During our interviews, we discovered that sometimes the interviewees didn’t understand our questions so we learnt that we should express ourselves more clearly. Practice and preparation are extremely important. 3.Website Design: During the process of producing the website, we discovered that designing webpages is not easy. Not only did we have to use old and new software, and designing the aesthetics of every webpage was also a huge challenge!

Lessons 1.Don't Put Off to Tomorrow What You Can Do Today: After every activity or interview, we must get everything recorded. If we leave it for too long, our workload will pile up and we'll start to forget some of the things that have happened. 2.Preparation is all-important:After a few interviews, we realized that we needed to prepare questions first and make sure the tape recorder was ready. It was also important to pay attention to the volume during the interview, in order to make transcribing easier later.

Surprises From the beginning, apart from getting to know the members of the orchestra, we also got to learn about the instruments they use and got to experience a concert at school which was a first for all of us. We wish to thank the members of the orchestra for their patience and teaching.

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