CyberFair Project ID: 3651

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International Schools CyberFair Project Narrative
Title: Playgrounds That Travel
Category: 3. Business and Community Organizations
URL: http://www.masters.ab.ca/bdyck/CyberFair2005/home/
Bibliography: http://www.masters.ab.ca/bdyck/CyberFair2005/home/bibliography/index.html

School: Master's Academy and College
    Calgary, Alberta, Canada

13 students, ages 11 and 12 year olds worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 18, 2005. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2003, 2004, 2005

Classes and Teachers: Mrs Brenda Dyck

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.masters.ab.ca

Project Overview

1. Description of Our Community

Our school, Master's Academy and College is based on a former Canadian military base in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Part of our college program includes yearly service trips to countries like Trinidad, Belize, Rumania and St Lucia. Here students and teacher mentors work together to improve living conditions for needy people. One of these teams is a work team that takes used playgrounds from the city of Calgary to developing countries. Elementary and middle school students from Master's Academy have the chance to contribute financially these service projects by buying lunchtime hotdogs and hamburgers and by affirming the college students and their adult leaders. Our 2005 CyberFair project, 'Playgrounds That Travel' hopes to encourage the people who take their spring vacation each year to build playgrounds in countries who don't have a place for their children to Our school, Master's Academy and College is based on a former Canadian military base in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Part of our college program includes yearly service trips to countries like Trinidad, Belize, Rumania and St Lucia. Here students and teacher mentors work together to improve living conditions for needy people. One of these teams is a work team that takes used playgrounds from the city of Calgary to developing countries. Elementary and middle school students from Master's Academy have the chance to contribute financially these service projects by buying lunchtime hotdogs and hamburgers and by affirming the college students and their adult leaders. Our 2005 CyberFair project, 'Playgrounds That Travel' hopes to encourage the people who take their spring vacation each year to build playgrounds in countries who don't have a place for their children to play safely.

2. Summary of Our Project

In 'Playgrounds That Travel', the Grade Six students have told a story that had it's beginnings at Master's Academy and College. In the four years since that story began the story has traveled far beyond the walls of this school in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. For this project, each student took responsibility for creating a web page for at least one of topic. They worked diligently to interview people who were part of taking playgrounds to developing countries and learned how to use the FrontPage program so they could create a web page to house their topic. The end result has been compelling and a testimony to the hard work of these students.

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:more than 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

- Many different lunch hour clubs are offered for middle school students at Master's Academy. It was difficult to find a day that didn't have a club already scheduled. Some CyberFair students had the challenge of meeting their obligations for more than one lunchtime club. - There wasn't enough lunch hours. By the end of the project we had to open up additional work times so we could finish on time. - Mr Ness was the only person that knew the background history of 'Playgrounds That Travel'. Since most of the project students have graduated and left the school, we had to rely on Mr. Ness for most of the information. Mr. Ness generously gave up many of his own lunch hours so that he could meet with CyberFair students- answering their many, many questions. - We lost project members along the way. Some students hadn't done any work on their page and so our existing CyberFair students had to pick up the slack by working on more than one web page.

- We would have liked to have included some audio interviews but we ran out of time.

- There wasn’t enough of Mrs. Dyck to go around. It would be helpful to have another person to help with technology issues. - Coming down to extra work times that fit everyone’s schedules - Missing school days that CyberFair was on - No sound on most of our computers - Hard to keep up with other school work while we worked on this project. Sometimes we had to miss lunch hour tutorials for math and LA because CyberFair took place on that day. This required students to find other times to meet for tutorials. - the FrontPage program developed soem glitches that we were not able to solve. For exmaple, the font changed and try as we might, we were not able to get the font to remain being 'Arial' throughout the pages.

We overcame these problems by working on additional lunch hours, and having an after school work bee. Because Mr. Ness really believe din our project work, he met with us whenever we needed to. Many of our project members were more than willing to do extra work. We are very grateful to him for that! and by making use of non-digital materials whenever we could. Many of our problems were tackled by 'sticking with it' and the students didn't let the glitches along the way deaden their enthusiasm to make this project a reality.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

The last night we worked on the project the students decided to create a white board message to me. It was full of their positive feelings about their CyberFair experience. I included a picture of the white board messages on our narrative web page ( near the borrom of the page):

http://www.masters.ab.ca/bdyck/CyberFair2005/narrative/

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

To answer these questions, we created a web page to house the following project content information. I have also linked it to our project web site.

Alberta Content Standards Addressed:

Language Arts:

http://www.masters.ab.ca/bdyck/CyberFair2005/Standards/

Information and Communication Technology Standards

http://www.masters.ab.ca/bdyck/CyberFair2005/Standards/Two/

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Project Elements

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

We used:

- Computers - Microsoft FrontPage - Interviewing those most closely associated with the project - Each other's knowledge and skills - Printer - Digital camera - Email - Internet

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

Our students acted as community ambassadors as they dealt with:

Parents (parents frequently stopped by after our work times. We would show them our progress and explain what we were all learning. Students shared their learning at home as well. Friends (peers would peek in as students worked. A number of students regretted not joining CyberFair and have let us know they will next year.

Will your project make a difference? Teaching others about this project that brings used playgrounds and bikes to developing counties has been a privilege. We believe our project could be linked to our school's serve as an additional information resource for those wanting to know more about the programs at our school.

What kind of feedback have you received? The parents, school colleagues thought it was wonderful. They were amazed that the students were so proficient at researching and creating their own web page.

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

This project has introduced the students and parents to the power of the Internet to promote learning and connect students to enriching resources. Students have expanded their technology skills, not for the sake of technology but as a tool to further their learning and communicate important information to the public. The project has created a space to house the impact that Playgrounds That Travel have made and shares the message that one person with a dream, deep faith and perseverance can move mountains!

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

This project connected middle school students with a teacher that they don't usually have contact with until high school. Mr. Ness is a high school Physical Education teacher. The students had plenty of opportunities to get to know him and he them. They also met several high school students who accompanied Mr. Ness. This was truly a cross-division learning project.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

Students experienced a great deal of satisfaction as they began to see the CyberFair work merge together into a thought-provoking web-based project· Because they stuck with the project, great things happened: a pizza work bee and an opportunity to get to know their peers and their teacher in new ways. Students enjoyed being able to snack in the classroom at noon each week as we gathered to work on our project. Students were excited about their newfound technology skills. Students commented on how interesting it was to learn about the playground project. They began to think about the day when they too could go on a service project like 'Playgrounds That Travel' and help needy people in other places!

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