1. Description of Our Community
From a traditional industrial and commercial society in its early days, Taipei has gradually transformed into a diverse information society. With the public sector taking the lead in shaping Taipei into an e-city, the private sector has also devoted its effort to joining the powerful trend of information. Taipei’s IT sector evolved from the hardware OEM phase into one that focuses on software development. During the process, Taipei has proved to the world that its IT sector holds an important position in the global IT market.
2. Summary of Our Project
“Information Taipei” was chosen as the research topic. IT companies were broken down into five categories, including anti-virus software, on-line games, databanks, multimedia, and computer animation. By conducting interviews and gathering related data about a company’s “vision, operation, management, and innovation,” we hope to introduce these outstanding local enterprises to teachers and students in Taiwan and around the world.
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:2-3
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
Rainy,Jack,Patrick:Chunghwa Telecom 512K/64K ADSL Cathy:Giga 768K/128K ADSL Ozzy,Gino:PcHome free dial-up 56K Chung Cheng Senior High School:Chunghwa Telecom 1.5M/384K ADSL
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
(1)Choice of research topic We hadn’t decided on the research topic until the group was organized to enter the contest. What’s more, the group members didn’t know each other well enough at first, and that has made choosing a topic all the more difficult. As the summer vacation was drawing to an end, we decided that ideas were nothing unless we carry them out, so we chose to start with the topic—“Culture of Cramming Schools.” However, after the first interview, we found that the concepts of education reform and cramming school culture were beyond our grasp. After comprehensive discussion, we finally chose “Information Taipei” as our topic. (2)Lack of interview experiences Most of our group members had never conducted interviews in big companies; inevitably, embarrassing and awkward moments were sometimes present in our interviews. However, as we completed more interviews, we learned from experience and became better at doing interviews. (3)Data gathering After doing the actual interviews, we found that extended information about some of the interviewed firms was rather little and not easy to find. So, apart from checking these companies’ official sites for more information, we went to libraries, searched for magazine articles and requested data directly from the interviewees via e-mail (of course, we’d always cite the information with permission from the company).
5. Our Project Sound Bite
Through this research, we not only understood how Taiwan’s IT sector flourished through the years, but also learned some interview skills and realized the importance of team spirit. Even though we ran into quite a few problems in the process, it was still a very fulfilling experience. We owe our thanks to many people whose support made our project possible. No matter what the contest results might be, we all gained more than we expected from this wonderful learning experience.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
*Support and encouragement from our school A lot of people at school cheered for us and encouraged us to keep working hard toward our goal-joining the School Net. First of all, our computer science teacher and members of the scientific research club helped a lot with the technical aspect of our project. On the other hand, our classmates and teachers helped us write letters to companies we want to interview, and gave us valuable input regarding our website. Even though our group members were all so busy that we could hardly spare time for this project, the support from school helped us to carry on. *Contact with IT firms The first time we made calls to the companies we wanted to interview, the receptionists didn’t take us seriously. Nevertheless, Gino skillfully talked the firms into having an interview with us. We all enjoyed the interviews. As representatives of Chung Cheng Senior High School, we believe that we left a very good impression on the interviewees. What’s more, apart from obtaining valuable information that does not show in a company’s official website, we presented our reflections, afterthoughts, and well-organized data in our website. Here we’d like to give special thanks to the companies and people that agreed to be interviewed for their precious time and generous help.
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