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1. Description of Our Community
Our community is at the foot of Yangminshan National Park. It is surrounded by Shuang-Xi River and Huang River, so the farmers could water crops easily. Besides, the land was very fertile in this area, and that was also the reason why there were paddy fields around in this area before. Due to the reports of pigwash oil, awful quality of rice, bleached bean sprouts and food product with plasticizer-tainted food, people in the city put more and more emphasis on “healthy food”. In addition to cultivating flowers, more people like to grow vegetables on their balconies. “We take good care of vegetable shoots and regard them as beautiful flowers. The flowers will wither, but the vegetables grown with love would become priceless cuisine,” said the grandmother. We were so touched by these words; therefore, we decided to put it into action: grow vegetables by ourselves for people we loved!
2. Summary of Our Project
In order to protect the environment and health, we were educated, restricted and forbidden to many things, such as “Don’t litter around”, “Don’t pour waste water”, and “Don’t eat junk food”. Too much “Don’ts” make people feel inactive. But this year, there came some differences in our lives. In our school, we had a special “farmer teacher”. Therefore, the vegetables grow much greater this year. My brother, who didn’t like to eat vegetables, ate lots of vegetables during the process of cultivating. Moreover, he asked Mother to teach him how to cook vegetables. I got lots of reflections form the Integrative Activities Project: The Chef of Wenchang, such as “My Brother’s Change”, “The Importance of Food Security”, “The Dreams of Being a Farmer and a Chef”, “Play With Vegetables”. In order to get safe food materials, the chefs of Wenchang had to be farmers, too. They made things become real: They used limited space and pottings to grow organic vegetables! We hope that we can record the process how these Chefs of Wenchang raked the soil, planted the vegetables, harvested the vegetables, and cooked them by this opportunity of attending International CyberFair. On the other side, we hope the concept of loving earth and lives can be deeply rooted in people, and every person can lead to a healthy life.
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
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
After November 16th, the day of school anniversary, we got the idea of participating in the competition. Not until December 31st did we recruit all the team members. We had fewer times than other teams. We could only meet and discuss at breaking time, weekend and winter vacation. Therefore, we make good use of Internet to save time. We used chatting apps and Google Drive to connect with each other and collect files. We started building a page of the project after school anniversary and short film announcement. It was hard to trace the origin, process and result. We needed to interview with many people so that we could get documents and files. Fortunately, our teacher helped us to build the outline of the page and clarify what we need for the documents. We recorded and dealt with everything carefully. We conducted our project with different software this time, such as Power Director, Photo Impact X3, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Microsoft Office. We borrowed digital cameras from the school and our parents. We were newbies to some of the software and equipment, so it was a little bit hard for us to conduct. Fortunately, many teachers and parents helped us a lot. This time we even learned how to work in relays. James and Ryan were good at shooting so they were responsible for photography. The partners from 4th grade were responsible for interview and document collection. As for we seniors, we were responsible for video edition, typing and art design. We had no experience in building a page before the competition. Therefore, our teacher taught us step by step. Sometimes, when we confronted problems, our teachers and partners would help us solve the problems in time. Thanks for those people who back we up!
5. Our Project Sound Bite
When we have harvests in the future, we will help disadvantaged minority and single senior citizen in our community. In this way, there will more people feel the warmth of the community. Besides that, it also can let us eat safe food and good for our environment at last.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
Language: We can sum up and take notes when interviewing, to express our opinions clearly when discussing, to figure out questions for interviewing, to show the most proper manner and volume when speaking, to organize the content of interview and type it into transcript, to search reading materials or related information for knowledge of planting and daily care initiatively, to briefly descript in complete sentence after observe related pictures or articles. Social studies: We knew our society more. Terraced fields have the function of conserve soil and water. Besides, it also has a unique ecology. Grandpa Guo let us be more aware of our past society. Science and Nature: We did planting by ourselves rather than read it on the science text books: we observe the complete process of growing plants, recognize the structure of a plant, know the sunshine must be sufficient and water supply must be adequate and DIY the organic fertilizer to increase soil nutrients. We also observed animals and plants in nature. We also developed a good attitude of science, by asking 'What is this?', 'How could this be?' propose issues from the variety of perspectives for exploration. We often asked ourselves 'how to do?' That is when encounter problems we can try to think the solutions by ourselves. Arts: We used natural materials in our garden to make crafts, toys, and scarecrow. The garden inspires our imagination and creativity so much. Math: When sowing and planting sprouts, we used lots of concepts of calculating, do business and keep accounts. During the process of making web pages, we also learned to arrange time. We used statistical charts to present the result.
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