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1. Description of Our Community
Wanhua, has a lot of new immigrants’ children, occupying 2.49% of the whole district students. Our school, Dali Elementary School, having 53 new immigrants’ children, is the most among Taipei municipal elementary schools.
Recently, the society and government gradually pay more attention on the issues of the spouses from foreign countries and Mainland China and their children. Until now, many studies have started to explore this topic. We hope to investigate this issue from the elementary school students’ point of view. The study participants include new immigrants and their children, the teachers in school, and the people from social organizations and the government. The study area is limited to Taipei city.
2. Summary of Our Project
* If we do not have the same feelings, how could we carry out this emotional study? Recently, the education problems about foreign spouses and their children arouse hot discussions. Our school has the most foreign spouses’ families among the elementary and the junior high schools in Taipei city. The teachers and counselors’ offices have to take their special needs into consideration. To integrate the educational resources for them, we hope to express our study results through this website and furthermore, to become the agent for foreign spouses’ families when they want to search information and help. * The spirit of our website is concern. We do hope to understand their thoughts, and know how to help them. When we recruit our study members, we take the students who care about this topic for the priority consideration. Among the whole 16 students, 8 of them are new immigrants’ children. Their parents are from Mainland China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and so on. Besides, the selection of these students also takes their specialties into consideration such as the talents for artwork, drawing, composition, computer, legwork, observation and etc. * The data collection methods include oral interview, telephone interview, and getting involved in the new immigrants’ activities. After the information is collected, we analyze our data and brainstorm the core questions.
3. Our Computer and Internet Access
A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:less than 20
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:4-6
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
1.The Internet environment in our school: Every computer can be got onto web. In the break time, the study members use computers to transmit and collect data. The 70 computers in our computer classrooms help us to scan and copy the papers.
2.Only half of the study members’ computers can get onto the web so the data collected during winter vacation were transmitted through e-mails from those students. Some of the members came to school and use the school’s computers.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
1.Interviewing the cases of newly immigrated women:
It was very difficult for us to invite newly immigrated women to be interviewed. Originally we hope to interview more newly immigrated women. However, few immigrant families were willing to be interviewed. They might be afraid of being labeled or they did not want to have their family on exposure.
2.Communication difficulty in language:
During interview, our study members were not familiar with the newly immigrated women’s mother tongue. At the same time, those women could not speak mandarin well. So it was hard for us to ask some further questions.
3.Long time-span for the study:
It was hard for us to arrange the appointments. To prevent influencing our team members’ learning at school (since most of them are students.), we try to have our interviews on holidays or during winter vacation. Besides, some cases were far from our school so it took us half or even one day to interview one case. And after interview, we had to classify our data and write down our thoughts and reflections.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
1.After four-month study and visiting a lot of schools, families, and government organizations, we have more understanding for newly immigrated women and knowing the pressure they have to face. Besides, we know more about what the schools, social organizations and the government have done for them.
2.In the past, we did not know much about new immigrants. We only read some related news and information from the textbooks or get some thoughts from our parents. Now we can be a love angle and clearly tell everybody how to help them.
3.Our website can be an information station for new immigrant women and their families. Also we offer some help and information exchanging functions. We will enhance the interaction function and more language versions for our website in the future.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
1.Our research matches the ability guidelines in nine integrated curriculum:
2-3-1 Explore the transition history of social systems and economic activities in Taiwan and understand the formation of its concepts and values.
2-3-2 Explore the origins of Taiwan culture
9-3-2 Point out the examples of conflicts, cooperation, and renovation resulting from different cultures’ contacting and exchanging. 2.The proportion of new immigrants’ children is high in our school, therefore we arrange a lot of theme activities to help us understand their culture traditions and to know each other. Multiple cultural viewpoints realize in our daily life and learning. We all have a sense of achievements after personally taking part in this project and exploring this monographic study, which is closely related to us.
3.The most interesting and meaningful experience: In the classes before, we had ever the experiences for role-play, reporter practices and so on. This time from the question brainstorming, interviewer arranging, editing, recording, and photo taking to the data collection the whole process is a very unique and impressing experience. Also we develop teamwork and cooperation ability.
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