 |
|
 |
 |
|
1. Description of Our Team
We gathered to share our opinions about the current situation of Korea being divided into two pieces. Eu-jin (age 17), Jae-eun (age 17), Jae-yong (age 17), Seok-seong (age 17) are our team member. We have two coaches, Ji-won Lee and Jung-wha Lee. To describe our team in detail, coach Jung-wha Lee, the Social Studies teacher, gave the direction how we can carry out this project. Coach Ji-won Lee organized the team and played a leading part in making progress to our project or in our discussion. Jae-eun and Jae-yong searched for information and edit the part we need for the project. Eu-jin, mainly translated essays and reports that we wrote. Seok-seong is our web designer, so he built our web pages mostly by himself. We are South Korean teenagers, and of course we have a great interest in our country. Considering we live in a country which has remained divided over fifty years, it may be thought natural for us to get concerns about this topic. But there were not many chances to reveal our own view on this issue, so we agreed to take this opportunity. Because of this coming home to heart motivate all of us took part in accomplishing our project positively. This is our team introduction. And from now on you will see what we have done in this project.
2. Summary of Our Project
As we described in upper text, we tried to learn about situation of parted Korea. Korea is under suspension of fire. This circumstance threatened peace of the world as well as that of Korea. Experiencing this uncomfortable state, we became conscious of necessity of thinking over this subject. We made four small categories in our project. “What is Peace?”, “Terrorism”, “Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)”, and “Korea Division and Unification”. In “What is Peace?” we learned the definition of peace. Also we searched for the people who dedicated to keeping peace and sacrificed themselves. Then we made reference about necessity of the peace. In second category “Terrorism”, we found out the meaning of terrorism, analyzed the cause of terrorism and searched for the cases of it. In third part, “WMD”, we searched for the information which tells us the detail of each WMD as chemical weapons, biological weapons and nuclear weapons. After learning about WMD we had a debate on the issue “Do we have to possess WMD?”. These three categories were written out for the last one. “Korea Division and Unification”. In this section we applied our basic information that we referred in former three categories to the case of Korea. In other world we learned about outline of World peace, and then we applied it to case of Korea. The most important part in this project will be involved in this section which is going to show our opinions.
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
The first difficulty was sparing time. This is because Korea high schools have their students come to school early in the morning and let go home in very late hours. Most of the students have to attend classes at 7:30 a.m. and may go home after 11 p.m. Even 12th graders need to go to school in the weekends. This schedule made us exhausted and this had our enthusiasm toward the project faded away. However, in spite of being tired, we made up our mind again to push on with our project, as we felt duty as Korean. To overcome this problem, we planned the project in advance, based on last year’s cases. Though we didn’t participated in last year, we could learn about this project from our seniors who have joined this work. As we guessed we would not be able to spare much time in following semester, we decided to build the basic structure of the project during the summer vacation. We gathered together some time and debated on the issues which require serious discussions, like WMD problem. That time we spent on the summer vacation helped us a lot to create our own Web pages. The second obstacle we had to face was language barrier. Since English is not our mother tongue, it was hard to translate all of materials we worked on. Especially it took a long time to translate what we wrote about WMD because there were many new words about weapons which were totally unfamiliar to us. To deal with this problem, we looked up a great number of words in a dictionary and asked our English teachers if they could correct errors in our writings. With these efforts we could get finished our project in the end.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
Our project meant the real opportunity to us. Even though we performed the project many things left to fill up, we could learn the importance of peace and could get more concerns in our nation. We expressed our own ideas about the unification of Korea as much as possible. Also we learned about detail things which are related to war and peace, like terrorism or WMD. This will influence us to be authentic peacemakers.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
In our project, group working was the most important factor. We didn’t have many chances to work in a group. But since team work is an essential element living in a society, this experience was invaluable to us. And we learned how group work can achieve the goal in difficult situation with cooperation during this project. Also our work supported Social Studies class. We learned about the relationship between society and culture. Doing our project, we could get the ideas more specifically. For example, searching for the culture of North Korea, we learned that different society can make dissimilar culture. Of course, this process acts in the opposite way, too. In Moral Education class, we learned contents related to war and peace. However, we learned this part superficially since we didn’t have much time to spare on the subject, though it is the most important topic. Carrying out our project, we could replenish the part we missed. We could meet the aim of that section.
|
|
 |
 |
1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your CyberFair project?
We used 5 computers in the computer lab during school and our home PCs after school. The PCs in the lab were all made by Samsung Electronics and its speed was well enough to do the work. Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash and Java were used for homepage constructions. Computers were also very useful for online discussions, sharing information, compiling all the information we’ve got from books, newspapers, etc. We did this through MSN Messenger and Microsoft Word. Books were really nice tools to us. Of course it’s rather far from what-we-call-technology, but still, they helped us a lot. We found most of our data from the library and added more from the internet. Cellular phones were useful, too. When the teammates were apart doing their parts, cell phones played a great role between our communications. We could finish our unfinished discussions and share opinions quickly by this.
2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair project both on-line and in person.
While working on this project, we certainly acted as ambassadors of South Korea. To others in school, the work we were doing was something new and unique. Such teachers from social studies, Korean history and ethics teachers were very much impressed with our interest on the subject we’ve chosen. Also we heard that one teacher from history class had actually displayed our homepage during his class to show 10th graders what they can do to make a difference. Since it took time to open a billboard for visitors (there were some errors on the web server), there weren’t many responses. However, we had actual visitors in person at out club meeting on the 3rd Saturday of December, 2004. 10th graders were really fascinated with our activity and were willing to success our club next year. It was very surprising to meet them because none of us had expected such support. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a good chance to show our work to the local community because our project is something rare and unfamiliar to people around here. With the help of some friends, our website was recommended in several study-group’s homepages and we hope for it to attract people’s attentions continuously. We, our teammates have agreed to improve our website more after the college entrance exams because we think this kind of work should be broadly known to people and make them think over very subtle issues that our country holds. By keeping up with this work, we’ll be acting as “ambassadors”
3) What has been the impact of your project on your community?
To tell the truth, our Web pages are not known to a great number of people. Though most of our classmates know about our project and are interested in Web Pages we built, we couldn’t advertise our project publicly. However, we agreed to make a little difference instead, which will be able to be strong power. For example, our team members had lots of talks on this subject with our parents. We asked them about history they learned or heard and we also told them our opinions. Our parents understood ideas we ascribed and gave advice to us. Our goal was to change ourselves first. And we thought this change would make others change who are close to us. Then, this change will reach a city, and the range which it affect will grow bigger and bigger. Actually we cannot perceive this change rapidly but we surely believe that our changed recognition to the peace will have the effect on the world.
4) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?
Because we didn’t have much time, to was not easy to go out of school for interviews or field studies. So we got help form our school teacher first. We asked about the concepts which were unfamiliar to us. And we also collected opinions from our friends about the Korea Division and Unification. From the outside of the school, we made the best use of the Internet. We could meet many people who were interested in the topic we chose. So we were able to obtain much information from their Web sites. Not only information but also we could make our decision from reliable data. Thanks to their help, we could build our Web pages.
5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)
Acquiring this project, we discovered very eccentric thing about Korean people’s thought. In fact, about half of Korean people are thinking that Korea is free from war.-We first read this in news paper (JoongAng Daily). After, I asked many teachers, friends, and parents if they regarded Korea as a danger place where war could be broken anytime. But half of them said, “No.” though North Korea had declared that they had had the nuclear weapons before. - Isn’t it surprising? In addition to this, another interesting thing is that some foreign people who have not visited Korea ever likely to think Korea is in wartime. Some of them in our age (friends of one of us) said they had been thinking that bullets rain in Korea.-Of course, we think it is a little exaggerated, yet we often get this information on TV. - Anyway we think it is so funny. By the way, we have known that our ideal of peaceful world and freedom of all nations cannot be almost realized. When studying the project, we learned that there are some other things which have to be considered as much as peace or even more. For example, economical conditions, policy aimed at gaining military superiority, international politics, and so on will not be able to be neglected by the reason of peace. So, in some point of view, we were somewhat disappointed at the world leaders and some public figures. The last thing we felt is that small efforts can make some helps to the world peace. VANK( http://www.prkorea.com/estart.html) which promote Korea to World's and hundred millions of netizens is example. If, like this organization, a person makes a small effort, in the end, it will become a strong power to make peaceful world. Like the bible saying, 'Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.'
|
|
 |
 |
|
 |
View our CyberFair Project
(Project ID: 3959)
|
