School: Uzhur Additional Education Center for Children
    Uzhur, Krasnoyarsk krai, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

12 students, ages 12-16 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 19, 2018. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017

Classes and Teachers: Anna Bukhtoyarova

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://

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 agricultural products that are distributed all over the region. The best dairy and meat products are made here. The town is by the federal way connecting regional capital Krasnoyarsk with the area of beautiful lakes. A lot of people driving through the city in summer to get to them. The city is developing but at the same time keeping a lot of traditions from the past. We are in the middle of Siberia and Siberia is the heart of Russia.

2. Summary of Our Project

“Babushka” is a Russian word for “Grandmother” that has become known internationally. Our grannies are the center of our community as they are the main keepers of our traditional culture. Statistically women in Russia live much longer than men. They keep the families together, they help the children, they grow their grandchildren. They are the living history of our community. We devote this project to our Granny as Babushka is the heart of our community. With huge love and respect.

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

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

Most of the barriers we had to overcome were related to communication inside the families. Grandmothers who are the main heroines of our research project are usually quite modest and are scared to appear online. They are really worried about their public image and appearance. So the main challenge was to persuade them that their participation in the project is for the good of the community and themselves. Another big challenge was technical as we have only a few computers in class and some technical issues occur from time to time.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Grandmother's role all over the world is a keeper of traditions in many communities. Uzhur Grannies are unique but at the same time they belong to the Grandmothers of the world that have made the humanity the way it is.

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

The greatest outcome of the project was the students’ practical experience on how to do the research project. The skills of collecting, processing and presenting information are the key ones in many fields of their studies. The content is related to Regional Studies class about local culture. Students learned how to extract data, analyze and categorize it. Some of them discovered the concept of peer-reviewing for the first time. 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 meaningful.

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

To create the website based on the research project the students had to collect a lot of different material in both visual and text format. They spend time brainstorming for ideas, structuring the project, collecting data. 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.

Respect for Grandmother is something that unites many different cultures. We believe that grannies are the cultural basis of our communities as well as many other communities in the world. Our goal is to show that these communities have so much in common to encourage mutual dialogue and understanding.

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

There is very little information in English about our town and its culture on the web. And this information is mostly too formal and therefore sometimes boring. The project will help us to promote our community through the website for global recognition. We hope to make this project to be a starting point for different online collaborative projects. We will also use this project to locally to draw our community attention to the grannies importance, to solving their problems and to supporting them.

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

Students needed to contact people from their families, friends and neighbors 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. We learned a lot about ourselves, our families, our culture and our country.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

Before getting involved in the project we did not realized how important the grannies really are for the community. The inside that we received from this communication helped us to understand our older generation better.