School: Jaw Nan Elementary School
    Miaoli , Taiwan, Taiwan

9 students, ages 11 to 13 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 15, 2004. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2003

Classes and Teachers: Ms.Chang Yueh-Ying, Ms.Lin Mei-Xian, Ms.Wang Yi-Tin

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.jnes.mlc.edu.tw/

1. Description of Our Community

Miaoli, known as its mountainous landscape, is also named the city of mountains. Most people in our hometown make a living as farmers. Through thrift, diligence and hard work for years, farmers have developed many special agricultural products like pears in Sanwan, strawberries in Dahu, and grapes in Jhuolan. With its fabulous natures, it is definitely a good place for people to relax their minds.

2. Summary of Our Project

Bee raising is a pretty popular industry in Miaoli. With the rapid development of tourism in this area, this WINGED agricultural industry has been even more flourishing. The Miaoli District Agriculture Innovative Farm is the only institute for silkworm and bee research in Taiwan. They have successfully counseled many farmers for better products and contributed to the research in this industry. We have interviewed the researchers of the institute and many farmers in their farms to closely observe the life of bees and explore their world.

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:2-3

C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection

D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:2-3

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

In our school, there are 2 computer rooms each with 40 sets of personal computers. We can access the Internet through the TANET, by Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) with 1536K uploading speed and 384K downloading speed. Our members use computers to access networks by either 56 dial-up modem link through various network providers or wide band services (ADSL) at home.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

Bee farmer can say to rely on heaven for the livelihood! Ever since autumn and winter, because this year’s weather is dry, rainfall is lesser, which has caused the nectar source plant to grow not as good, and affecting the amount of pollen picked by the bees, which in relation with the amount of pollen produced for sale, it has also decreased, indirectly affected the observation for the pollen gathering, and the willingness of the bee farmer to participate in our interview. Fortunately during summer vacation, we already have highly concentrated on our interview, as for the part on the bee’s ecology, we already have a complete understanding, moreover, bee farmers have still try their best to provide us with related information, which has enable our research to proceed smoothly. Even most of the time, we are tied up to the busy timetable of school, we still insisted on keeping our schedule and tried our very best to get it finished. Because we know,bees would never wait.

With limited resources from school, we had to find every possible alternative to carry out our project. For example, we used a lot of photographs to illustrate the process of raising bees. In order to get better quality of pictures and connection speed, we had spent quite some time modifying the photos. Besides, we also surfed the Internet to find websites or went to bookshops for free “downloading” of data we needed. We have tried hard to break the limitation and make our project even better.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Most parents and teachers have a stereotyped view about learning, that is, learning can be only confined in the traditional classroom. This time, we stepped out of our classroom and made some variations in the way of learning for students. Meanwhile, we were also inspired by the change and progress the children have made in these few months. We surely learn things from each other. We hope the birth of this project would help more and more people find the beauty of our hometown.

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

Traditionally, education can only take place at schools. While this time, the resources of our community and parental supporting have played an important role on the research. We believe that diversified curriculums and more real time experience would motivate and stimulate students’ will of learning. The mission of education is to enhance students’ ability to think, to ask questions and to solve problems by themselves.

Acquiring basic knowledge of computer is one of the benefits we’ve got throughout the research. The trend of using computers has gone international. It’s urgent for everyone to learn how to combine the skills and knowledge of using this modern technology in our daily lives.

In addition to increasing our knowledge in science, we have learned skills like how to organize a team to work on a project, communicate with people and also the importance of cooperation. Learning is not just an individual activity for acquiring and storing knowledge. It’s beneficial to share what we have learned through interaction. Besides, it’s essential for teachers to provide students with an environment of abundant living materials. The result of our research would be used as a supplemental material for science and local social studies subjects.

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

1. Telephone:To keep contact with people for interview and to arrange schedule. It’s also used for communication between members.

2. Digital camera system:To shoot the process of research and to pick up figures from books.

3. Computer & the Internet:For collecting or uploading data and to edit photos and written journals.

4. Computer software:Microsoft Office seriesUlead PhotoImpact 7.0 Macromedia Dreamweaver MX Macromedia Flash MX Macromedia Fireworks MX

6. Tape recorder:For interview

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

Our research process is first through Mr. Liu, Tseng-Cheng of Miaoli District Agriculture Improvement Farm, from the provision of the bee keeping production and marketing name list, to look for the interviewing objective, use telephone to contact the host of beekeeping farm, after requesting the agreement from the host, we’ll go and discuss the research content with the host; in addition, through introduction by Mr. Liu, we were able to contact with some of the professional scholars from the agriculture improvement farm, which has enable our research to have more depth and content.

We successively visited Chunan I-Tu Cake Shop, and Mr. Liu, Fu-Ming of Toufen, Mr. Li, Yi-Zhan of Tzau Chiau, Yong-Yi Bee’s Garden, Mr. Hsu, Chen-Sen of Ming Pin Beekeeping Production & Marketing, and Mr. Liu, Hsu-Ming’s beekeeping farm at Hsin-Miao Beekeeping Garden. Of course, at the beginning, we would definitely introduce ourselves; let them know our research directions and needs. For all the interviewing activities, the host will lead us to look around, explaining and providing us with many free bee products to taste. For every visitation, we would prepare the interviewing content beforehand, and to proceed the interview by oral method; to inquire after the questions on-the-spot, recording the key points, and to assist by recording, to prevent any miss of information, at the same time use camera and video camera to capture the precious shot.

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

This research project has expanded our horizon, let us learn a lot. During the research process, discussion, interview, collecting and sorting of information, and learning how to design webpage, etc., providing us with multi-angle of learning, such as how to publish, how to communicate and negotiate, how to conduct research, how to write report, how to divide the labor in cooperation…, with enhancing by these abilities, which are what the special topic of research project can bring us.

This special topic of research project has let us be even closer to this land that we live in, consequently help us to have deeper level of knowledge and understanding for our homeland. Moreover, this research has shown the feeling of our concern for the native soil; beekeeper and the people of the community have also hope through our research, to reach the objective of publicity and promotion, in order to enhance the beekeeping industry.

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

By doing this project, we found that the interaction between schools and our community has greatly increased. Through the understanding of our hometown, we’re more bonded to our lovely hometown. What we are trying to do is to promote our local specialties by introducing them through the Internet and raise our publicity as much as we can.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

After this research, we truly feel that bee is a very useful insect. While bee is gathering nectar and pollen, they not only propagate pollen, as well as to let the fruit bearing ratio for crops such as fruit trees to enhance, increasing the production quantity; the honey, royal jelly and pollen that it produced are all highly nutritious food product, its economic value has really exceeding our imagination, this industry is really worthy of continuing and expanding.

We feel that beekeeping industry can combine with leisure tourism, traveling and rest, this way it can provide more people the opportunity to experience, achieving the joy of living through teaching effect. Through the contact with beekeeper, we have also realized the affect of environmental element on beekeeping industry. Many crops during the course of nurturing and management still would often need to use insecticides, consequently greatly reduce the values of its nectar source; also because of the influence of greenhouse effect on the earth, the weather changes, the long term drought has led to the decrease of nectar source and pollen source, these are all the current predicament of beekeeping industry. At here, we wanted to also call on everyone to value the environmental protection, because we only have one earth to live.