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1. Description of Our Community
Our Hojing River is located at the northern side of Kaohsiung City, originated from Shi-Kan Mountain of Kaohsiung County, passes toward south and flows by Yuan-Zhong Harbor into Taiwan Strait. It measures total 9.2 kilometers long and 7668 hectares broad; it is one of the two main rivers that run through Kaohsiung City.
Since the 60’s, many processing industrial companies includes Chinese Petroleum Company, the Ren-Da Industry, and the Nan-Zi Processing all have established factories around the high and mid reaches of the river. The close-by residential population has also grown excessively due to employment opportunities. Hojing River was a place that people came to love for its beauty and calmness, but right now it is no more than a “drain pipe” used for flood-prevention and waste disposal. In the last two years, there had been disturbing incidents report unknown oil-bearing waste-materials found in mid and lower reaches of the stream. Although the river is not used for our drinking water, it is the primary source for farm irrigation along the riverbanks.
2. Summary of Our Project
Hojing River, flows right besides our Jia-Chang Elementary School, it’s almost part of our campus. Though we have included Hojing River as part of our vernacular teaching materials in 3rd and 4th grade classes. However, we believe we have not prepared enough for our students at this field. We hope to reevaluate and revise our class schedule further in the Integrative Curriculum; incorporates more “environmental education principle”, and “natural recycling concept” into our teaching. This may help students, parents and perhaps the society to learn more and care our living environment, creates an adequate level of resonance and understanding for the local community. In addition, with the actual participation of teachers, students and local people, it has not only given us practical observation and hands-on experience of Hojing River’s ecological environment, but also the expectation of local. We believe with their valuable inputs on how to improve this area, and the upcoming government renovation plan, restore Hojing River’s former beauty is no longer a dream.
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:more than 6
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
Our school has been equipped with 85 computers in two specialized classroom. On the other hand, every single classroom has a desktop computer for teachers and students’ use. There are a number of our members do not own a computer at home, thus limited our building process, but they were able to utilized the school’s computer at spare time. The technology infrastructure is very complete and convenient, nearly everywhere on the campus has computer access, it has eased our website construction work tremendously.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
Group Assembly
From the start of application sign-up to its deadline, there has only about a month and half in between. Our members were selected across different grades of school. In such short time we have to overcome the conflict of our members’ scheduling problem, and adjust members’ web task according to his/her understanding or knowledge of web content. Most of our works were done after school or between class periods. We have also spent a lot of time just waiting for entire group assembly; Wednesday afternoon has became the only time of week we can all gather and discuss our work. At beginning of this project we weren’t all that motivated, but as the deadline approaches, we discover our unlimited potential to make radical progress – in the shortest time, worked up our best effort.
Information Gathering
In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of attention received on Hojing River’s environmental rebuild and ecological development. However, there were little or almost no research or analysis had been done regard these issues. The only source of our information was our schools own faculty case study “Hojing River Simulation Study”. Therefore we must conduct interview with the local and former faculties on how they perceive Hojing in order to obtain data for our research. With their experience and expertise, we are going to uncover the secret behind the Hojing River.
Webpage Production
Initially we dreamed big for our fantastic website-would-be. Elegant front-page, rich content, resourceful linkup, beautiful design, wonderful pictures, many people laughed at us calling us silly; but we upheld and keep our idea. However, in our process of constructing website we faced numerous unexplainable difficulties such as “computer does not startup” and ”saved work disappeared” etc. We encountered many other obstacles along the way but all of our members continued to fight, searching for that silver lining in the darkness. Eventually our website was born, we all felt gratified on what we have accomplished.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
United the strength of school, students, and parents, our study receives firm support. Utilized the usage of questionnaire, interview, and past experience, our content presents rich diversity. Upheld the difficulty of computer breakdown, save data loss, our work spirit reaches higher state-of-mind.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
a. Develop ability of appreciation, comprehension and creativity: Through paintings, poems and pictures, students express personal feeling toward Hojing River. b. Cultivate knowledge of expression, communication and sharing: Every week everyone shares what he/she has learned in open discussion. c. Respect others, concern for society, encourage teamwork ethic: Prepare questionnaires together, conduct interview together, collect and consolidate information together. d. Practice ability of planning, organization and execution: Make website structure outline plan, content and final design. e.Make use of technology and information: Get familiar with webpage software tools “Dreamweaver”, digital camera, and voice recording device etc. f. Arouse self-motivation and research desire: Initiatively students search for related information on web and compete with other members. g. Develop individual thinking and problem solving ability: Face various situation such as “do not have enough seat available during field trip”, “computer breakdown”, and “collect and put data in order”. These are the times we put our little brains into work. h.Increase self-awareness and self-actualization: Initially the reaction paper that the students did, were mostly around 200 words, but after participation many could write up to 400 words.
The target of our primary research is the Hojing River, which just locates near the school. Many of our students are even neighbors of Hojing River since they live just close-by the riversides. Although close, most of them have limited knowledge of the river; many of them do not even know its name. In order to let everyone understands further about the Hojing River, we have arranged related materials for course content. In these lessons we have taken credits from “National Kaohsiung Marine University”, “student family” and other resource. By the combination of National Kaohsiung Marine University’s professional water quality test system and questionnaires and interview we did with student family, we have created a three basic elements of standard course, “teachers are course planner”, “everywhere is a lab” and “course fits our indigenous culture”.
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