School: Wu-Fu Junior High School
    Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Taiwan

16 students, ages 14-15 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 14, 2003. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2003

Classes and Teachers: Kuei-fen Chen,Pei- Lin Wu and many enthusiastic parents

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.wfjh.kh.edu.tw/

1. Description of Our Community

Dona community is the location of Rukai Tribe. The population is about 600. The most presentative tradition culture of Rukai Tribe is their rock house. There are the two biggest festivals every year- the Millet Festival on July 15 and Rice Festival (black rice festival) on Nov. 24 to 25, which are their annual celebration to honor rich harvests. Rukai Tribe has very elaborate handicraft articles in wood carving、stone carving and knitting clothing… etc and thousands of totems that develops spectacular humane resources and represents enthusiastic culture.

2. Summary of Our Project

As to the research of Rukai Tribe, we can know more about their culture and art, but by the invasion of the main stream of social value, some of the aboriginal tribes are ignoring. We hope that we can do something to preserve the aboriginal culture and also transfer the information to our government to preserve their culture go on and on.

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:4-6

E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):

During the website-making period we fully used the source that our school provided. There are three computer classrooms in our school, which had just been renewed not long ago. The outgoing Internet environment is ADSL 1.5M/384k which connected worldwide website that could search all the information we need. Besides, our school has a FTP that we can save all the documents we've made.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

Because of the heavy work of normal school’s studying, and each of our team member had our own science and other researches to made, so getting all the members together was a little bit difficult. As for that, then we decided to divide our team members into 2 groups : Interview group and Information Gathering group. Each of the two groups visited down town, Maolin, Dona, Ma-Ya, etc. according to the information needed. And we also went to National Science Technology Museum, libraries, National Historical Museum and Native association to collect all the information that we needed. We learned how to arrange our time, and make plans before every interview without interfering our normal school studying to achieve this research.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

We realize not only the collection of information, but also interview the local people to prove the realistic of the information we collected to make a good website. And during the investigative trip, we also collected much historical information that are going to lose and found out many personal valuable collection to enrich our website.

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

Because of the research of Donna Rukai’s, we have the chance to visit those lovely and friendly aborigines and we found out that the livily “teaching materials” are much more interesting than we have learned from the books. In addition, those precious experiences can be proved in the two subjects-” Knowing Taiwan’s Society”and ”Taiwan’s Geography” in school. So we have more impressive understanding about Taiwan’s aboriginal culture. We realize not only the collection of information, but also interview the local people to prove the realistic of the information we collected to make a good website. The daily school’s cleaning work, the classroom decorating work, and even the school annual sporting campaign such as tug-of-war, relay race, and the ball game all need everyone’s effort to achieve the goal. And during the investigative trip, we also collected much historical information that are going to lose and found out many personal valuable collection to enrich our website.

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

We used various kind of technologies-laptops, digital cameras,digital videos, etc. We used a digital camera to take the photos we needed and to film and record voice with a digital video and a laptop when interviewing. Using a laptop instead of a radio can reduce the interference of some noise. Every team member all needed to use a laptop to edit Internet pages, flashes, and pictures. We surf the Internet for the information that we needed and make phone calls to the local people in the Dona society. In addition, we sent emails to deliver messages and to ask some questions. We have learned how to made website, exciting animation, and also learned how to use the photo impact to edit the pictures. Due to the daily typing training , our typing speed is then getting faster than before. It’s more efficient and convenient to learn through the Internet. The Internet has changed our lives, and had made our lives more convenient and easier than before. We realize not only the collection of information, but also interview the local people to prove the realistic of the information we collected to make a good website. And during the investigative trip, we also collected much historical information that are going to lose and found out many personal valuable collection to enrich our website. We realize not only the collection of information, but also interview the local people to prove the realistic of the information we collected to make a good website.

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

One day, the family of the Kauos , the Pais , and the Chens got together to visit MaoLin, a natural forest, they had a very good time there, and nearly forgot time home. When they decided to drive home, they found it was too late that they got lost. About 20 minutes later, they discovered a beautiful place-Dona Village where it is simple and people there were very kind and warm. Everybody had already been very hungry then, so they went to a small resturant, the owner of the restaurant told them so much about the history and some interesting stories of Dona village. They were all deeply moved about the culture of Rukai, and at that moment, they decided to introduce this beautiful village to worldwide. With the enthusiastic man’s help, we assigned mission to each member of this team. We interviewed Dona village and the people there many times, they were moved by our sincerity and gave us help that made us completed our research.

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

This research project plan made the residents of the Dona village have deep impression on Wu-fu junior high school because we are one of the minority junior high schools in Kaohsiung to research aborigines, and we have a lot of pictures taken by ourselves! Many of our classmates didn’t have any idea about Dona at first. After browsing our web site, they all said that they learned a lot, so we have quite many topics to discuss !

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

In order to get more ideal and authentic materials when making our web pages, we spent holidays visiting Dona village to interview Chang Cheng-Hsyin, the leader of Dona Tribe, Yu Te-Fang,the chairman of Dona association, and Lu Hsyu-Mei, the owner of Te-Te Workshop. They are all very enthusiastic and glad to provide us lots of materials and information. During the interview, when mentioning about the preservation and value of slabe houses, we can see that Mr. Chang is very care about Rukai’s culture. Mr. Yu even prepared much information and taught us several sentences spoken in Rukai’s language. Miss Lu told us the source of many handicrafts and the symbolic meanings, even taught us to make leather sculpture! All of them work hard on the preservation of aboriginal culture. We are very thankful for their contribution and effort.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

In this semester, we began to join this project contest. Because there was much work to be done, our computer teachers took advantage of the short lunch break to teach us the advanced web-making techniques. During the concentration training, some might not come because of school studies or other things ongoing, so how to effectively complete this mission became much more important. But if there were too many people participating, some might think that the others would do the job well, and they themselves would spend less time and efforts. And then it would procrastinate degree of progress. By joining this contest, we have learned a lot of many knowledge and techniques such as how to use the computer, modify words, and make web pages. In the meanwhile, we also learn how to communicate and communicate with others to accomplish this project, and what is the most important is to get to know more about the humanities and music of aboriginals. We can say that our personal growth is quite abundant .