CyberFair Project ID: 7794

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International Schools CyberFair Project Narrative
Title: Our City in a Garden
Category: 7. Environmental Awareness
URL: http://sninfocomm.wix.com/sngscyberfair2014
Bibliography: http://sninfocomm.wix.com/sngscyberfair2014#!bibliography/c1c98

School: CHIJ St Nicholas Girls' School
    Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

16 students, ages 15 - 18 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 5, 2014. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013

Classes and Teachers: Infocomm Club

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.chijstnicholasgirls.moe.edu.sg

Project Overview

1. Description of Our Community

Our local community resides in a city defined under the name, 'Garden City', in reference to the many trees, flower bushes and the like planted all over the city, which provides a very nice accompaniment and contrast to the glass-and-metal skyscrapers of the city areas. As the appointed 'gardeners' of our Garden City, our local community is entrusted with the important job of keeping our city clean and green.

2. Summary of Our Project

Singapore is a nation with a rather small land area, which is shared among the population of five to six million. With little space to spare for living and work areas, Singapore has a lack of natural vegetation, but is relatively abundant in human resources.

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:1

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:more than 6

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

During the period of CyberFair, we had several challenges that we faced while doing the project. We took some time to brainstorm in our small group for ideas for the opening video clip. After which, we took some time to create and put together the Stopmotion videoclip. We also faced challenges of collaborating within a large group of people, and finding time to do the project together. This was especially difficult as we had a large group of students doing this project and our schedules and opinions constantly clashed. However, we managed to resolve our differences, especially our conflicting viewpoints, and we managed to come to a compromise with each other and thus work better with each other, completing this project to the fullest of our abilities. We also took time after school to meet up and complete this project, not necessarily as a whole group but as smaller groups, so that clashing schedules would not hinder our progress on this project. Also, we were unable to retrieve most of our pictures in time for the project, as we had to wait for permission to be granted by the copyright owners in order to use their pictures on our project. We have managed to solve that by personally taking our own pictures using DSLR cameras.It was also a good opportunity for us to put the skills that we have learnt during our photography training sessions to good use.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Working towards one goal has forged stronger bonds between the members of our Infocomm Club, and we have all become harder workers and better friends out of this experience. Also, through Cyberfair, we have all learnt a great deal more about the importance of saving and protecting our environment, as well as the many measures our government has taken to counter the environmental issues we face.

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

Our school highly values gratitude; the act of being thankful. The value of gratitude is instilled in every student, and for our project, we highlighted the various ways that we could be thankful to our environment, and through our project, we also hope to increase environmental awareness of the average person as a form of gratitude to what our environment has provided us. Some new skills that we have learnt is to create a website with minimal help using an online website builder, creating a Stop Motion video, and taking beautiful pictures using the skills we learnt in our DSLR photography courses. We also practised group concepts such as creativity and teamwork while brainstorming the ideas for the Stopmotion and resolving conflicting ideas, and learning how to effectively spread out workload between our team members so that we could complete this project in a more efficient way. We have also better understood specific ideas by seeking help from friends, seniors and our teachers, who have then since provided us with a better and clearer view of certain ideas. From this project, we have learnt that there are indeed many things that we can do as a student, to help increase environmental awareness within the school community and also that however small, we were also able to play a part in school, in various aspects such as practicing the 3 R’s (reduce, recycle, reuse). The Internet, for teaching and learning has also been more effective than traditional methods as it is more efficient, and we were able to corroborate and verify the authenticity of information that we have collected, and we were also able to check the reliability of our information with various different sources.

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Project Elements

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

Firstly, we have spent our extra-curricular activity time after school twice a week to work on our project in our school’s computer lab, where we had one computer to each student and we could work on CyberFair using various softwares such as iMovie to create our Stopmotion video, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop to edit and create images that we took using DSLR cameras such as the Nikon D7000, to use for our project. In fact, most of the images found on our website are taken by various members on our team, and the graphics for the website were created using Photoshop and a free stock image website, stockphotosforfree.com. We have also made use of a free website builder tool, Wix.com. Wix has allowed us to create our website using a simple click-and-drag technology and giving us flexibility to edit many details of the website without having to worry about coding the website from scratch, saving us a lot of time in the process of creating the website. One of the most valuable and free tools that we have used for this project is Google Drive, or mainly Google Documents. Most of us have used this tool for many other school projects as it has a friendly user interface and allows many people to work on a document at the same time, as the files are located online and can be accessed anywhere and anytime, resolving the issue of having to meet up to complete the project as we could all work from our own homes. We would not have gotten this far without the help of all these tools, many of which were recommended by our teachers, friends and also the Internet in accordance of our needs.

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

Most of the time, we contacted the people in our community through email or by calling then directly. We chose to do so by email mainly because we felt that it was the best way to contact them as it was fast and efficient. For instance, some of the organisations that we have contacted such as BCA (Building & Construction Authority) and PUB (Public Utilities Board) have expressed interest in our project. We contacted them for request of permission to use their website’s information and logo, and they had replied us thanking us for the interest towards their organisation and went on to request a write-up of the website we were creating for Cyberfair, as they were interested in what we were doing too. We were surprised when they had expressed their interest towards our competition work, but nonetheless we felt honoured that they were willing to take some time out of their busy schedules to reply us and even to read through our competition work. Another interesting encounter we had was when we contacted the European Commission to request permission for the use of a video they had uploaded on Youtube. They had promptly replied to us within a few working days and had also included a link for us to access more videos created by them alongside their permission towards our request, which pleasantly surprised us too.

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

Our project will hopefully be able to impact the community positively by making them more aware about the importance of local environmental issues, and encourage them to make a difference to our environment by playing their part. We also want to let them know through our website that there are many different ways to play their part and everybody’s contribution will help, no matter how small it may seem. Through the creation of this website, we have attempted to educate the public on environmental awareness,as well as to let people in our community be more aware of the efforts our government has put in to help tackle the environmental issues we face, and in this way, we hope to make an impact. Our project will also help to educate and hopefully motivate the youths in our community to take a stand for our environment!

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

As students, we did not have an extensive network of contacts and mostly had to rely on ourselves and our teachers. We also managed to contact some of our seniors who had previously participated in Cyberfair to guide us along as well. We would like to thank our teachers, Ms Choo Teck Chan, Mr Tham Otto and Mr Lau Yong Gnee for introducing this project to us, guiding us in our research and constantly monitoring the development of this project to ensure its progress. We would also like to thank our seniors for helping us along the way and giving us advice from their experience having joined the previous CyberFair entries, despite their busy schedules. We would also like to extend our thanks to many of the various external friends that have helped us in any way, such as one of our member’s Photography Club who guided her to take several pictures used in the website, and also our friends and classmates who have supported us and gave us feedback since the start of this project.

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