School: New Technology High School
    Napa, California, United States

Four students, ages 17 years old worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 16, 2006. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2006

Classes and Teachers: Julia Berger and Robyn Stanley, Christina, Ivan, Amanda, and Emily

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.Newtechhigh.org

1. Description of Our Team

Our Political Studies teachers introduced this project to us as a way to get us interested and internationally aware of international affairs. Little did we know that we would be so enthralled by the information we discovered. The people in our group are Amanda (age 17), Emily (age 17), Ivan (age 17), and I, Christina (age 17). In the beginning, we emerged as a group knowing each of our teammate’s potential to contribute to this project. After discussing our project and our views on diplomacy in business, economics, and trade, we found out that we had a diverse outlook within our group on this project. In addition, we decided to split up the topics into three separate categories so that we could research them more in depth. Emily created our website in addition to researching our topic of economics. Christina took on the task of researching the trading segment of our project in addition to making sure we were getting all of the required content into our website. Amanda researched the business aspect of our website in addition to collaborating with the other team members to make sure our ideas were consistent. Ivan did additional research for our website on top of the research that our other three team members did. We decided to use him to research all of our information so that we could have more content and a different outlook on the same topic. Julia Berger and Robin Stanley, as our advisors on this project guided us through the project and told us what we needed to accomplish. They helped us research topics when we didn’t know what to type in as keywords. On top of all of that, they were always there to answer our questions whenever we asked about our website or the content in our website. If they couldn’t answer it, they were able to find someone else that was.

2. Summary of Our Project

The doors to diplomacy website project focuses on eight categories that are an essential part of any nation. The categories are leadership traits, peace and democracy, science and technology, safety and security, history of foreign relations, health and environmental awareness, arts and culture, and business, economics, and trade. The first task of this project was to choose the topic of our choice, which was business, economics, and trade we then had to begin our research and collect information from many sources to assure that we had enough content. The last part of this project was to complete a website that demonstrated how our topic connects to diplomacy. Along with the content we had certain questions we had to answer for each of the three categories, some key questions were about importing and exporting goods, business objectives and maintaining a strong economic culture in the United States along with other countries. We also had certain objectives we had to meet such as demonstrating the dependence which exists within our own community and the multi-national networks that connect goods, people ideas and information. We also had to identify successful international businesses and organizations and describe the contributions those organizations make to our personal lives; we evaluated economic trends and business opportunities, as we took our chosen career path into consideration during our research.

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:21-50%

B. Number of workstations with Internet access in the classroom:more than 6

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:not sure

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

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

One of the biggest technical obstacles that our group faced was uploading our project to a web hosting page. We would upload it, and then it would delete our files and we’d have to start all over again. It was extremely frustrating considering we had so many pages and pictures to upload all at once.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

The Doors to Diplomacy project has given us an immense amount of exposure to the United States’ international affairs and foreign policy as well as countries around the world. It has changed how we view the each nation when it comes to business, economics and trade, which will be valuable to us in the future.

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

When we first had this project presented to us, we spent a lot of our time researching the topics that we were given when we divided the work up. While we were researching we spent most of our time online (which was our main source of information). During this phase of the project we all had to use our researching skills to find out all the information that we would need to get it done. Certain topics proved harder than others to find, and it was even harder to find information about different topics that all ended up tying in together. This project tied in nicely with our standards at New Tech because it is a technology based school, it made since to have a project where we needed to make a website. In addition, it gave us practice in using the program Macromedia Dreamweaver, which we rarely get to use. Also it involves learning about the very thing we were learning in class, so this project gave us a great opportunity to learn and research topics on our own. This is the perfect type of project for our school because our school’s philosophy is trust, respect, and responsibility. This project used all of these things: trust in your partners, and your abilities. Respect for your teammates learning styles and way of doing things. And responsibility, having the sense of responsibility to do what is required of you when others are counting on you.

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

Our first tool that was used in completing this project was computers, of course. In correlation with the computer we had to use the internet to obtain a significant portion of the information on our website. Each of the people in our group had access to a computer in order to sufficiently research their information as well as design our website. Our main tool and the most helpful, the Internet and computer, are both located at our school. Since we are a technology school, we have a one to one ratio of students to computers. Our other major source of information was through a local interview and just talking to people using common knowledge. Our main interview was by the owners of Van Der Heyden Vineyards located right here in the heart of Napa.

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

The doors to diplomacy project has taught all of us a great amount of knowledge on the economic, trade, and business aspects of the nation, with this knowledge we will all act as ambassadors, an ambassador is someone who informs, teaches, publicizes, or educates people on certain topics, we will act as an ambassador as we teach others our knowledge that we have gained due to this project. We will be able to raise awareness on business, economics and trade due to our research we conducted for this project. The personal contacts we have made with people that might visit our website are our other classmates that may be curious about the other topics that they had not chosen, also our teachers who will look at and evaluate our website for correct content and literacy. Yes, people are impressed with the work that we have done on our website we feel that we have obtained a great amount of content and will receive a great amount of respect for our job on this project.

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

While doing this project, our fellow classmates as well as our group have become more aware of the international affairs and foreign policies that our nation has been involved in both in the present and the past. As we talk to more people about our projects with our peers and some of our classmates that are a little more political, we can give them access a portion of the information that we have researched. In addition, we want to send out our URL to other members and parents in the community so that can have a summary of the vast information that we have researched. Our goal is to make people more aware of the events that are going on in our world economy today.

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

Doors to Diplomacy involved our community members as volunteers because we needed to use them as resources for such things as outside sourcing for information on our topic. One aspect of this project stated that we had to have an outside source to represent some information on our topic; for this part of our project we interviewed one of the employees from Van Der Hayden Vineyards about exporting their wine and trading with other businesses. We thought this would be a great example of business, trade and economics since the wine industry is the main industry in our community. Another helpful tool to collect information was other people’s websites online, we used them as a source of information on our topic; these websites were very helpful in collecting the things we needed to complete this project.