CyberFair Project ID: 8324

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International Schools CyberFair Project Narrative
Title: Celebrations and ceremonies in Uzhur
Category: 8. Local Music and Art Forms
URL: http://sites.google.com/view/uzhur/home
Bibliography: http://sites.google.com/view/uzhur/bibliography?authuser=0

School: Uzhur Additional education center for children
    Uzhur, Krasnoyarsk krai, Russia

15 students, ages 12-16 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 19, 2017. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016

Classes and Teachers: Anna Bukhtoyarova, Mikhail Bukhtoyarov, mixed team of different ages

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://

Project Overview

1. Description of Our Community

Let us present a small Siberian town Uzhur that is located more than 300 kilometers from Krasnoyarsk, the biggest city of the region. The main industry here is agriculture. The best dairy and meat products are made here and distributed all over Siberian region. The town of Uzhur is located by the federal road connecting regional capital Krasnoyarsk with the area of beautiful lakes in the south. A lot of people drive through our town in summer to get to the lake area. Uzhur is developing as a district center but at the same time the town keeps a lot of heritage and traditions from the past. We are in the middle of Siberia and Siberia is the heart of Russia. Welcome!

2. Summary of Our Project

“Siberia” sometimes sounds mysterious for people from outside Russia. They often imagine cold, bears and strange people in fur coats. But this picture is very incomplete. Our mission is to share the true image of Siberian people with the world showing their real stories. In our opinion the best way to present people is through the cultural events that are important for the community. That is why we decided to create an encyclopedia consisting of two parts: “Celebrations” and “Ceremonies” about our home town and some smaller villages around. “Celebrations” will tell you about the local specifics of celebrating Russian national holidays in our area. “Ceremonies” will show you traditions of private events that happen throughout the life cycle of most locals. We believe that local culture is mostly about community cultural events. And those events are all about people. With warm regards from Siberia!

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:4-6

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):

The main problem was the lack of computers connected to the Internet at school. Teachers had to bring their private computers and ask their family for the same help.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

For many of the students it was the first experience in web design. They had to learn not only about the tools to create it but also about research techniques and proper source citing ethics. The students are of different ages and go to different public schools so it was a real challenge for them to work productively as a team. For most of them it was the first international project in their life. So it was hard for them to manage but very interesting and inspiring.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Imagine people in Siberia! How they live and look like? Now go to our website and check if your guess was right or not. Learn more about us and compare our culture with your own one!

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

The greatest benefit of the project was the students’ practical experience on how to do the research project. The content is very much related to Regional Studies class teaching about local culture. But thanks to the competition we had a chance to have a fresh view on the topic. Students learned how to extract data, analyze and categorize it. They discovered the concept of peer-reviewing. They applied the international rules of research ethics. They also contributed a lot to English language learning in practice. That is not very common for Uzhur, a remote Siberian town where the students have very little chance to really practice a different language. The project gave them a great opportunity to apply their knowledge for something very practical.

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Project Elements

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

To make the project look like an encyclopedia the students needed to collect a lot of different material in both visual and text format. We chose to use Google sites for our project as it is a user-friendly tool for the beginner. To create the content students were using video recording and photo taking. Our policy was not to pay to much attention to the quality of photo and video production but to the authenticity of material.

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

We decided to do this project to have a conversation starter for international collaboration project with students from other countries. Now we can present ourselves and encourage others to compare cultures. This is the web presentation card that will help us to become better ambassadors of our community.

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

There is very little information in English about our town on the web. And this information is mostly too formal and therefore sometimes boring. Now we are going to make an agreement with the popular local news website to have our encyclopedia linked to from there. We will also promote our community through the website for global community. This project is going to be included in different online collaborative projects as a conversation starter. It is much easier to discuss similarities and differences in cultures when you have visual support. If you want to collaborate, we are open for ideas!

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

Students needed to contact a lot of people searching for visual materials and obtaining their permissions to use them. There were different supporting ideas from friends and relatives on the project structure and content. Before the official peer-reviewing for the competition we asked the friends and relatives for both our town and outside it to give us their feedback.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

We learned a lot about ourselves, our town, our culture and our country. Before getting involved in the project we did not realized how local some of our traditions are. We discovered that the customs that seem so natural for us may look very unique from outside our community.

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View our CyberFair Project (Project ID: 8324)

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