School: TaiHe elementary school
    ChiaYi County, , Taiwan

8 students, ages 12 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 3, 2003. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2004

Classes and Teachers: Josie Wang

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.thps.cyc.edu.tw/

1. Description of Our Community

TaiHe village locates at the east of Meishan township, ChiaYi County. Many years ago, TaiHe village was named 'GeLiWei' originated from the sound of aboriginal language. Being Surrounded by the one thousands and two thousand meter high mountain, it is surrounded by bamboo grove and green forest. You can see the green bamboo and clear tea farm everywhere. Based on the influences of location, TaiHe village brings varieties of natural resources and beautiful sightseeing, such as abundant fruit, vegetables and products, fantastical sea clouds and so on. Visitors can enjoy the beauty here and forget the noisy coil. People who enjoy mountain climbing also immerse themselves in the beautiful scenery, such as the sunrise, cloud seas, and sunglow here. In addition to the main economic plant, tea leaf, there are also various plants and living creatures in TaiHe due to its landform and climate. People of local community almost live by agriculture. Most of them are owner of tea farm as well as tea-maker and fruit farmer. Some of them run the lodgings. They are optimistic and hospitalized. Parents are quite concerned about children education, and very glad to attend the activities held by school.

2. Summary of Our Project

Our project is focus on 4 aspects: (1) History & culture: History, religious belief, and culture of TaiHe village are the points on this aspects. We will introduce you by 6 points: a) Guide of this section. b) the story and history of places. c) JhunHsien Temple which is the religious center of TaiHe villiage, but also a characteristic architecture. d) Rd. 169 telling the spirit of TiaHe villagers. e) TaiHe Primary School, the cultural center, and f) Tea art. (2) Landscape: A number of distinguished scenic spots and countryside inns in TaiHe are introduced in this section, such as the top 10 beautiful spots, and the ancient passages, ReiTai passages and FenTai passage. These 2 ways are important ways linking TaiHe and other places in early times. The setting sun and cloud seas in TaShan also give you the most fantastic memory. (3) Ecosystem: TaiHe village has the abundant animal and plant resources. Under the theme of ecosystem, we will introduce you some interesting animals, such as cypriniformes cyprinidae, macaca cyclopis, spilornis cheela, and stage beetles, and also very common flowers in Taihe, like Taiwan cherry, Hibiscus, Mexican sunflower, and wild tree peony, etc. And we will lead you into the world of the in-depth studies of Odontolabis and Ecological Engineering. (4) Products: This section report the special products of TaiHe. Despite the vast bamboo groves and tea gardens, delicious alpine vegetables often provide visitors much food for thought. After meal, local fruits such as sweet persimmon and red plum are helpful for digestion. The quality of Tai-He tea is comparable to the tea of Mt. Ali, although it does not receive equal fame.

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:none

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):

TaiHe is a remote area that enjoys no broadband internet inside the village. Therefore, the school equipment is our only access. There is 11 PC, connecting by T1 line to the internet. Besides, for data storage and computer managing, the school also allowed student to use 5GB of the hard disk for their convenience. However, the location of the school is rather far from city. The connection went dead easily after shower or rainfall. It pretty much depends on god if you like to serve on net and download/upload data.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

(1) The landform varied much in this little village of TaiHe. Every time we went out for a visit for field trip, we must ask our principal or directors to drive us anywhere we arranged. Without their help, we might need to spend for hours to arrive a specific location. (2) There are only 30 students in our school. Therefore, as senior students, we joined almost every contest outside school. For example, 8 of us all joined the county music contest. In this semester, the principal gave us a lot of school work in order to improve our competition abilities. Therefore, we used our break time to collect information. Team members also reminded one another to watch out the time to collect information. (3) There are many beautiful sceneries in TaiHe. In order not to break the beautiful impressions of TaiHe village by our bad photographing skills, we appreciated Director He providing us many beautiful pictures. (4) Before doing this project, we seldom had chance to contact with the community. We even had no idea whom to be interviewed, either. With the great help of Director He and Principal Lieu, we obtained valued information. Director He also helped us contact with those interviewees. Director He often laughed at us about our behaviors just like noisy ducks, however, he is our most important consulter.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

TaiHe community is our hometown, all of us will benefit from it if we built it carefully. Every member in the community should have the honor and duty to take good care of her as possible as we can. And we shall never forget the place we were born.

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

We uses the 9-year educational plan guideline designed by the Education Minister to develop the project. Hoping to revoke the home loving of the students, the curriculum focused on 'bamboo forest and tea village.' Therefore, we named our website by this title. We integrated related activities and research into the curriculum to help students know their hometown well. Students will benefit from learning the related knowledge, such as the hiking activity and local skill learning project . Through this internet exhibition, students were asked to gather the related information of TaiHe by themselves. Besides the topic of 'love my home land' under society field, student also experienced the importance of team working and come up with the basic ability of academic research.

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

The tools and technologies we used including following lists: (1) Interview and field trip: By interviewing local people, listening to oral history and field trip, we know better much more about our community. (2) Internet: Finding useful information from internet and learning others' excellent expressing ways. (3) Library and community guide map: A well edited community guide book produced by our teachers gives us the great direction in collection information about our community. (4) Recording pen: Taping the content of the interview and remixing it into musical disc. (5) Digital camera: The digital camera is used for photographing our procedures of activities as well as recording our performances. project. (6) Printer and copy machine: The usages of printers are to share the information with other partners. With the use of copy machine, teachers can copy some reference to us, such as maps and newspaper coverage. (7) Computer: Organizing the data by computer and storing our valuable information as well. (8) Telephone: Connecting to the interviewee about meeting time and group members for discussion. (9) PC software: OFFICE2000,FLASH MX(test version),FileZilla,PhotoImpact7(test version)and win98,winxp, etc...

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

In addition to our website presentation, we provide the e-mail address of the school and students so that everyone who is interested in knowing TaiHe can get in touch with us directly. Moreover, in order to let the community understand what we have done, the school also has held a show to present our website on the end of January. Not only will the juniors will get to know about our effort and progress by the show but also the whole community people.

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

We wish the whole world could know our community. But how to do it? We decide to participate in this context that we can provide the whole information of TaiHe toward the world. For a long time TaiHe Primary school has been the activity center of TaiHe community. Last year, the school held many activities about local industry skills. Also community mapping and the Internet exhibitions all meant to promote and introduce TaiHe community to Taiwan. This project detailed the sceneries, ecological environment and historical development about TaiHe. Besides, due to students' effort on this project, the parents and community members did their best as an informant enthusiastically. And that will inspire them to think about future of this community and then protect their own community cultures, not only for us now, but also for our children.

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

Through the contact with community members, we obtained information of history about local development and resourceful information on our web pages. For example, the development of JhenHsien Temple, 169 county road and TaiHe community. Besides, ex-director Kao of parents association and his wife also provided us a complete information regarding lodging. Ex-chairman Ye of parents association, who was the leader to rebuild the temple, told us about the history of JhunHsien Temple as well. There are also other enthusiastic people such as Lee-chin's grandfather, Cian-yu's father who gave us great support. Not only they explained the history in details but also treated us well. All these prove that a successful activity will definitely depend on everyone's effort and cooperation.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

Working on this project is the most unforgettable experience during the school life. During the whole event, we learned everything from meeting, interviewing, and presentation to computer skills. We learned from our mistakes as well. Through our hard working and revising, hard working and revising, we finished all the jobs. We not only learned something about technology application, data processing and analysis, but also a responsible attitude at work and the importance of team work. Our teachers often says: 'no one can really improve his or her country by working alone.' Therefore, we divided into four groups who can support one another. For example, Lee-chin is not the member of group humanity and still she helped to interview Mrs. Kao regarding tea making art. For another example, Cian-yu is not the member of group environment, but she still helped us take care of the terrible huge larva of stage beetles. We, all students and teachers, are in one and that makes us happy too.