School: Ozel Aydin Murat Yildirim Okullari (MY College)
    Efeler, Aydin , Türkiye

3 students, ages 13-14 years old worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 8, 2021. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): It is the first time.

Classes and Teachers: Bermet KORGOLDOEVA , Ozcan ATAR, Students: Nilüfer Dilek Yerlikaya, Simay Sahin, Zeynep NUr Toker

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://https://aydin.myokullari.com/

1. Description of Our Community

We live in a city of Aydin, central district of Aydin Province with a population of 1.098 million people(2019). There are many local sites of hidden value within and nearby our location unknown to most members of our community. Besides popular historical landmarks which are already known locally and worldwide, a few isolated remarkable spots have existed in remote corners of our Aydin city and have needed to be introduced well to the public. Thus, we strongly believe that these sites can be perfectly classified as one of our local specialties.

2. Summary of Our Project

We are willing to conduct all necessary research regarding isolated and unnoticed sites of unknown value in remote corners of our community. We believe that we should contact experts who may provide us with specific knowledge about the sites. We have to organise not only one trip but several trips to the sites to take genuine photos and videos at first hand which we need to put on our project website. Totally, we have 4 exact places of our interest and surely, we have worries about organising the trips in the current pandemic situation. Nevertheless, we have a keen desire to carry out the research on these ancient sites. By means of International Cyberfair competition we will feel extremely enthusiastic to share the results of our study by creating a website. The requirements for the competition are genuinely a new thing for our students, namely first, acting as an ambassador for their community by going through the research procedure related to their own local community and second, creating a website thats shows the work of their own to everyone they know.

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:2-3

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dial-up modem

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

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

Initially, much more students were planned to get involved in the Project. But the current pandemic situation has held some parents and students out of participation in any kind of activity. This year online education have made the students already passive and distracted. At least this was the case that we had at our schools in Turkey at the beginning of our academic year. So the idea of participating in a project during the online interaction was not appealing to most of my students and parents as well. Especially when they heard about the project content that needs to do some outdoor acitivities, they were reluctant to any details and hesitated to take part in. Despite this, we had a team of 3 students and our coordinator including me with eager faces that can’t wait to kick off the first meeting for the project. To be honest, we had enough of quantity and quality to accomplish the project as best as we can.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

I have to say that I have been following Global Schoolnet in the last 2 years. I was greatly impressed by the work done on the website. Consequently, I have been telling my students about the projects that were completed on Global schoolnet in the past years. That is why, I am sure that, our first participation in International Schools CyberFair means a great deal of excitement and it matters to our students, to our other teachers and to other local schools on the whole. It is the joy of doing a research 'by students' on our local community issues and it is the happiness of presenting it to local authorities, various institutions and of course, to other schools’ communities around the world. So the sound bite is “Dream it. It is possible.” The message is: we are possible, you, me and everyone is possible to contribute to their local community.”

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

Our Cyberfair Project included the following elements of research to meet the requirements for content standards and curriculum in our country: Primarily we needed to find data source on our ancient places published by our governmental institutions and local authorities. For this reason, we have visited Aydin Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism to get support with necessary printed materials on specific sites. The authorities were happily surprised to hear about the project. They immediately offered their help with all necessary field trip permissions. Additionally, they were ready to share their Inventory Books from their library which contain every single registered ancient site in Aydin Province. Soon afterwards large two-volume set of inventory books were given us as a gift. It was valuable assistance for our research to find a registered source. On the one hand, it appeared that our project perfectly fit into their promotional activities of Aydin’s archeological sites, done by students from local Secondary School. On the other hand, it perfectly fit into the Innovative Educational Approaches of National *TÜBITAK’s curriculum, “*4005 Science and Society Innovative Education Implementation”2020. (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) As to the project requirements for our school, this project is a genuine task-based learning outcome to set a concrete example specifically not only for secondary but primary students as well. Our project members are pioneers in implementing a project-based learning method. Both traditional or technological methods were used throughout the research. However the idea of creating own website and using different online educational tools tipped the scales in favor of the Internet. References *https://stip.oecd.org/stip/policy-initiatives/2019%2Fdata%2FpolicyInitiatives%2F25946 *https://www.tubitak.gov.tr/sites/default/files/303/4005_cagri_metni_2020.pdf

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

The list of information tools and technologies we used to complete our Cyberfair Project. a. Project team member’s personal computers and tablets. (5 Phones, 2 Tablets, 3 PC) A semi-professional Digital Camera (Canon). A tripod for camera and mobile phones. Usage of Internet mostly at homes due to pandemic contraints such as weekend curfew or lockdown. Teleconferencing and holding meetings via applications such as: Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, Adobe Connection and Whatsapp. b. 2-volume Inventory books for registered ancient remains published in 2012 by local Aydin Provincial Directorate of Tourism and Culture. Special and limited edition of Yapikredi bank published by the name ‘AYDIN’. P.S. Inventory books were valuable for the ancient remains at the foot of Mount Madran Baba. Because we needed to determine whether these remains registered or not. Once we found out that it was not in the list, we set our sights on connecting this site to local historical heritage and perhaps adding its name to the local ancient heritage list. c. Cooperation with extremely popular local magazine “in Aydin” to get publicity for our project. Pages from local newspaper “Aydinpost” related to unknown sites. d. Cost of a yearly hosting domain of Wordpress for creating our project website paid by our school. We wanted our site look well-organised. It was worth it. We received a great deal of support from our Project Coordinator to guide us. Because he actually owns his own blog. He taught us basic rules to make posts on the Wordpress server. Also, we used Canva, to create Mindmaps, Photo Edits and Posters and Tagul clouds, to create a Wordart Posters. e. All charges and expenses related to 4 field trips totally provided by our school administration. We drove hundreds of kilometers, that is 526 kilometers in total to complete all of our journeys.

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

We needed to establish relationship with different people from various institutions throught the process of the carrying out the project. Our students have acted as representatives, firstly, of their own school. Again and again I have to underline that due to pandemic restrictions my students were not allowed to visit especially indoor and outdoor places. That is why social networking sites was the first method of communication with our experts in historical ancient sites. They found out their contact details online. Afterwards, we contacted them on the phone and arranged our meetings and seminers.

:) The most trickiest part of this project occured during the field trip to Latmos. We found a local guide by the name ‘Auntie Zeynep’. She voluntarily agreed to lead the way to cave paintings. To Auntie Zeynep, the time of getting to the place was going to take 30 minutes. But to our surprise, definitely not to her, it took 1.5 hour-long walk, only one way. Totally we walked on uneven terrain of the valley, we climbed up and down rocky hills for about 3 hours. That was backbreaking and exhausting for our students. However the results of the on-site exploring experience were super satisfying. On the way home we laughed a lot thinking of Auntie Zeynep’s tricks on us. After the trip she still seemed to be quite energetic. :)

:( The most stressful and thrilling part of the project was the last 2 weeks before the deadline. In fact, at the end of February, we eventually had the chance to go outside. However the curfew on the weekends were not still cancelled. So we had only 2 weeks (just weekdays) to finish our field trips. To sum up, we made it.

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

IMPACT ON YOUR COMMUNITY With every step we made in our community to accomplish our project we realized that people we met had been impressed by the idea of creating a website about our local specialty by the students. On the one hand, our project has already had an intriguing effect at the introduction stage with the theme “Lesser-known local ancient sites of Aydin Province.” The theme itself was inviting. On the other hand, participation in International Competition on behalf of our school about our local community had increased appreciation and admiration to higher level in our local community. Firstly, we made presentations about the project in an interactive way in classes which are having face to face education at our school (7-8-9-10). After displaying the web site, students applaused our team in joy and excitement. Afterwards they asked a lot of individual questions about the possibility and opportunity to participate next year. Secondly, we established new relationship with local institutions both from public and private sector throughout the process to conduct essential research, to obtain necessary permissions and to get publicity for our project. We have worked with institutions, such as Adnan Menderes University, which is a single local university in Aydin Province, the Directorate of Culture and Tourism of Aydin Province, local magazine ‘In AYDIN’, which is quite popular, trend-setting, dynamic within Aydin Province . Lastly, we have plans to continue to introduce our project to broader audience until the very last date of our Internet Server expiration date. As the last step, we are planning to upload the whole content of our website to a free domain server so that anynone could see it in the future. https://www.adu.edu.tr/ for Adnan Menderes University https://aydin.ktb.gov.tr/ fort he Directorate of Culture And Tourism of Aydin Province https://www.facebook.com/inaydin for the magazine ‘In Aydin’.

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

Here is the list of people who helped us with the project: 1.Fatih KARAHAN,a headmaster of our school.(took on all expenses regarding field trips to 4 place each individually. I guess we wouldn’t realize our project without this financial support) 2. Kenan ÇIFÇI, a deputy manager in Aydin Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism. (granted Inventory books and gave all legal permissions to do field trips) 3. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Murat ÇEKILMEZ, from Archeology Faculty at Adnan Menderes University. 4. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Songül Aslan KARAKUL, from French Language and Literature faculty at Adnan Menderes University. 5.Assoc. Prof. Dr. Okan ATAY, from Agriculture Faculty at Adnan Menderes University(provided necessary contact information about university). 6. Cansu KARATAS, a primary school teacher at MY College (joined us in all field trips). 7. Askin GÜLOVA, a music teacher (joined us in one field trip) 8. Koray KARAHAN, a staff member at our school (was a safe driver during our trips) 9. Mucahit AKKAVAK, a volunteer driver of a second trip vehicle. 10. Ali GÜREL, a vice principal, a history teacher(gave an interview about our historical aspects) 11. Auntie Zeynep, a local dweller of the Kapikiri village close to Latmos hills. (she was our local guide in Latmos.)

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

:) The most surprising discovery that we made to ourselves is to find out that studies and research about our chosen sites (Latmos and Gerga) had been started around 2 years ago. It was new. We had a thought that if we had started the introduction of the sites 2 years ago, we would have filmed their work at the first hand like a documentary of our local community and we would have been the part of it. But still we were on time to raise the issue of forgotten and unnoticed sites in local area. So the lesson to take personally, if you have an idea to realize you shouldn't wait. There is no perfect time. If you have a project, have at it!