School: Pingtung Gueilai Elementary School
    Pingtung City, Pingtung County, Taiwan (R.O.C.)

7 students, ages 10-11 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 1, 2018. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2017

Classes and Teachers: KAO,CHIH-MING

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://web.glps.ptc.edu.tw

1. Description of Our Community

We live in Gueilai community, located in the east-southern Pingtung City. Gueilai community is a naturally formed farm village, called Qizailun in the Ch'ing dynasty.

In recent years, young people had continued to leave hometown for development. A negative population growth was evident. The aging community was forming. The Gueilai community development association was committed to participation in rural regeneration, hoping to slow emigration of young people, and tried to attract young people to return home to participate in community empowering.

Below is the image that people of Gueilai community have in common. In the morning, misty Dawu Mountain rare emerges under blue skies. In the Pingtung Plain, Mazu Temple guards Gueilai for decades. A Plumeria of three hundred and sixty years stands rooted in this land. Under the sun, the gesture of Plumeria’s white petal with yellow heart is more attractive and charming, revealing the deep underground mystery of this land. Burdock, green onion and yam beans are main agricultural products of Gueilai, what we called “Three treasures of Gueilai”.

2. Summary of Our Project

A group of children brought up by burdock grow up. Many of them have outstanding achievements in the professional fields. Mr. Chen, Chien-Hsing, one of them, takes burdock farming as his life career. The protagonist of this thematic study is Mr. Chen, Chien-Hsing, the winner of the 2013 Shennong Award. He is the first farmer who wins Shennong Award due to planting burdock in Taiwan.

This thematic study explores the course of Mr. Chen, Chien-Hsing's returning hometown and the difficulties he encounters after returning hometown, Gueilai. The course of the establishment and current situation of Gueilai Delisen burdock will also be discussed. In the course of the exploration, we also want to know the current development of Gueilai burdock industry and all the achievements made by Mr. Chen, Chien-Hsing in Gueilai burdock industry. To finish our thematic study, we use interviews, field visits, video recording, taking part in experience activities and so on.

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

First, some of our teammates were unable to join the team activity to go to the visiting activity or record the video. Our Solution: We carried out the main activities and interviewing on Wednesday afternoon because we had no class at this time. Then, we had to group by tasks and our talents. Our teacher divided our team into several working groups and each group had its own task to be done.

Second, sometimes, it was not easy for us to catch the main points of our reviews and thoughts. Our Solution: Our teacher guided us by provided writing outlines for us. We also shared our writings and checked our reviews with the teammates. By this way, we had the opportunity to learn from good writings and then improved our writing skills.

Third, we were not familiar with how to use Mandala thinking. Our Solution: Our teacher showed and guided us to find keywords according to the plot from the video for the first time. After the first practice, our second work was to finish semi-finished Mandala thinking worksheet. With hints of the first-layer keywords, we were getting better and better in this work.

Fourth, collecting first-hand information through the interview is an important activity of thematic study. However, we have no experiences about interviewing someone. We have no ideas about what questions to ask, how to interview, how to present our results of the interview and so on.

Our Solution: First, our teacher guided us to figure out our interview questions according to the Mandala thinking worksheets. Then, we learned how to interview through simulating the day of the visit. During this activity, we learn how to ask questions clearly, what manners we should behave, how to ask further questions to make clear and how to express our thanks for his help. We also record our interview by video with the consent of Mr. Chen at that day. By doing so, we can type and finish our parts of the interview afterward without being rush at that day.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

1. We personally visited Mr. Chen, Chien-Hsing, the winner of Shennong Award in Taiwan, to collect first-hand information. 2. We want to tell the story of the revival of Gueilai burdock industry under the leadership of Mr. Chen, Chien-Hsing. 3. We want to enhance everyone's understanding of the great treasure of Gueilai, Burdock. Mr. Chen, Chien-Hsing is one of the most professional people in the field of planting burdock. 4. Through this thematic study, we develop school's special activity of the food and agriculture education. 5. To contact the community leader to get support for our school’s activities: Through our face-to-face interaction and interview with Mr. Chen, we enhance mutual understanding and recognition for the support of the activity and development of our school curriculum. 6. We have eight main findings from the interview with Mr. Chen about his story of Gueilai burdock industry, and we make our research findings into the video and share the video publicly.

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

We have engaged in the following learning activities: A. Language: 1. Reading references and summarising the materials. 2. Writing the reviews and sharing thoughts with others. 3. Learning how to interview and practicing asking good questions for answers. B. Social Studies: 1.Understanding the hometown specialty, burdock and hometown burdock industry development. 2. Understand the story of the main character who contributes to the hometown burdock industry. 3. Writing and telling our own hometown story about burdock industry. C. Health and Physical Education: 1. Understanding the traceable agricultural product of burdock. 2. Understanding organic and traditional ways of growing Burdock. 3. Making healthy and delicious burdock waffles. D. Information Technology Education: The software we used to complete this project: (1) Drawing mindmap by FreeMind, (2) Editing images and drawing comic pictures by PhotoScape, (3) Designing the webpage’s templates and icons by Inkscape, (4) Making our web pages by Dreamweaver, (5) Editing our video by CyberLink 8, (6)QR Code Generator and QR Code app. The hardware we used to complete this project : (1) Digital camera, (2) Digital video recorder and (3) Smartphone.

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

1. FreeMind: Drawing the project frame and the mind map. 2. PhotoScape: Editing images and pictures of the web pages. 3. Inkscape: Designing the layout of web pages. 4. CyberLink 8: Editing and dubbing into the video. 5. Dreamweavers: Making the web pages. 6. Digital camera and video recorder: Photographing and recording pictures and video. 7. Smartphone: Photographing or recording the interviews. 8. QR Code Generator and QR Code App. 9. PowerDirect 8.0: Editing our video.

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

1. We invited Mr. Chen, Chien-Hsing to be our lecturer to teach us how to grow Burdock. 2. We also interviewed Mr. Chen, Chien-Hsing to write the story about his return and his efforts for Gueilai burdock industry. 3. We shared the story of Mr. Chen at the morning meeting, in the information classes and in the course of the social field. 4. We made the billboard of OR Code tour for Gueilai burdock painting walls at the Pingtung Gueilai Elementary School to introduce them to visitors to our school. 5. We made the Website “Great Passion for Growing Great Burdock ” to share our results with everyone. 6. We shared our reports publicly: We shared our report, our Interview with Mr. Chen, Chien-Hsing, the winner of Shennong Award(2013) in Pingtung Gueilai area on the PeoPo: https://www.peopo.org/news/360529, and the report of our main findings from the interview with Mr. Chen about Gueilai burdock industry on the PeoPo: https://www.peopo.org/news/360805

7. We shared our video publicly: We uploaded our video, The Whole Burdock in Gueiali [CyberFair2018] to PeoPo and youtube website to share Gueilai story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9E9nS3Tncc https://www.peopo.org/news/360971

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

(1) We work hard for inheriting the burdock culture and story. We record the Gueilai burdock story of Mr. Chen, Chien-Hsing, the winner of Shennong Award and his contributions to the burdock industry. We also make good use of the four painted walls with burdock characteristics in our school and make a QR Code guided tour of the burdock culture. We plan to make the painted wall in our school a great attraction for burdock culture in the tour of the burdock community. We do our part in documenting and inheriting the burdock culture. All we do are good for preserving our burdock culture.

(2) Our school combines the local burdock industry to develop food and agriculture education of the local farming characteristic.

(3) We establish a website to promote the story and his efforts of Mr. Chen. Gueilai burdock is very distinctive and of high-quality. Burdock needs a lot of publicity to share with the world. A good story may inspire more people to engage in agriculture and work together. This time, we make the first-hand information into a website with local characteristics.

(4)We make the video to tell Gueilai story of Mr. Chen's efforts. We want to introduce Gueilai burdock industry and share the video on the PeoPo website and youtube.

To promote our Gueilai story of Mr. Chen's efforts for burdock industry, we also decide to share our summary of the interview with Mr. Chen.

We post our summary of Chinese version and English version on the PeoPo, the website of Taiwan Public Television to share with more people.

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

This is the third year that we participate in the Cyberfair project. Although Mr. Chen is always busy in his burdock industry, he is always willing to support our project. After we contacted with Mr. Chen, he thought that it is worthwhile to serve as a burdock planting experience lecturer, teach us how to planting burdock and received our dating for interviewing. He never refused our request for our project study, though he was always in the hurry for burdock industry.

While teaching us how to planting burdock, he showed all the burdock farming that are novel and interesting for us to learn. He did his best to teach us how to plant burdock. He really deserved the reputation of the burdock farming expert. With his help, we had a better understanding of burdock planting and burdock industry.

In the process of our interview, Mr. Chen always answered our questions with humor and quoted us many examples to make us have better understandings about his words. He was always concentrated in answering questions. We thought that Mr. Chen was very serious about our questions. We all learned much about Gueilai burdock industry. We really thank Mr. Chen a lot for his generous help.

Besides, we got help from Mr. Chen’s wife, Mrs. Chen. She takes charge in dealing with the business of Delisen. She provided us with many data and many pictures of Delisen and the 13th Vegetable Production and Marketing Group. We thank Mrs. Chen for her generous help for finishing our project web pages.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

Surprises: We have better and further understandings of Mr. Chen's efforts for Gueilai burdock industry.

1. Burdock industry costs a lot of money to invest in equipment and research.

2. In the past, if you were not good at studying, the family would want you to go home for farming. In modern times, farmers need to work hard at learning new knowledge and then to be able to engage in agriculture.

3. Mr. Chen is a burdock magician who turns out many burdock products, such as burdock root tea, burdock sencha, burdock crisps, dried burdock root floss, dehydrated burdock, burdock essence capsules, burdock vinegar, and herbal shampoo.

4. The secret that Mr. Chen helps burdock farmers make money is that only the best quality of burdocks with the highest price are sold and the rest of burdocks are processed into many kinds of burdock products. By this way, the price of burdock increases.

5. People who want to make money must first know how to help people and are thoughtful of them.

Discoveries: Our main findings from the interview with Mr. Chen about Gueilai burdock industry are below.

Findings 1: At Gueilai, it is the promised land for planting burdock. Findings 2: At Gueilai, burdock is a elaborate planning! Findings 3: At Gueilai, burdock is more than agriculture products. Findings 4: At Gueilai, burdock is more than agriculture. Findings 5: At Gueilai, the whole body of burdock is all treasure. Findings 6: At Gueilai, burdock is a well-designed strategy of the industry. Findings 7: At Gueilai, burdock is inherited from generation to generation and the vocation of sustainable development. Findings 8: At Gueilai, burdock is a well-planned ideal 20 years ago and at this moment come true here. Coming back to Gueilai with great passion, how great Gueilai burdock is~

Our eight main findings of Mr. Chen's efforts for Gueilai burdock industry were made into the video and shared it on the PeoPo. The url is http://www.peopo.org/news/360971.