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1. Description of Our Community
Our community of Tai Chi qigong was created from a team consisting of students from the school, and various professionals of the school along with people who lived nearby. The location for practice and other activities became the school grounds. Also, Mr. Barry Lin created ????????, an instructional organization to direct both the general populace and the team of Dayes in proper training and practice of Tai Chi, with the main goal of promoting general well-being throughout the nation.
2. Summary of Our Project
Mr. Barry Lin is the creator of our Tai Chi community. His warm-heartedness in educating and caring of the public, along with the team at the school, and the selfless sacrifices he’s made for bettering of the community are two of the many reasons why we chose him as our inspiration for this project. In the special case research process, it has made us realize that the Chinese martial arts are broad and profound, the many benefits it provides to body and mind development, and the perfect role model of Mr. Lin.
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:1
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):
1.Telephone and cell phone-Used for communication between students, teachers, family members,and subjects of interviews. 2.Internet-Used for research, emails, and research results. 3.Digital Camera-Used to take some beautiful pictures, auxiliary writing explanations. 4.Tape Recorder-Used to record all audio from interviews. 5.Printer-Used to print website outline and material gathered from the Internet. 6.Digital Camcorder-Used for interviews, the entire process, the most complete of all resources. 7.Library-Used for resources pertaining to Tai Chi. 8.Computer Software-(1) Word – Used for daily diary and material organization (2) Webpage previewing software (3) Photoimpact, Photoshop – Organize pictures (4) Swish, Flash – Animation (5) ACDSee – To see the pictures taken during the interview (6) Power Director – To edit film taken with the camcorder (7) Frontpage, Namo – For the creation of the actually web pages 9.Scanner-Used to scan students’ works and interview pictures, to enrich content 10.Instant Messenger-Freely downloaded from the Internet, used to communicate with each other when at home. 11.Portable Flash Memory-Used to transport large quantities of data.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
We encountered, in this special study process, several trifling problems, with several more difficult problems listed below. Items followed with a brief explanation:
(1) Participation time
We are all sixth grade students, every day after school we all had varying extracurricular activities, so to find time for everyone to work together on this project was hard. Therefore, we took the time during lunch break to come together. When we had to do interviews with various Tai Chi teams, everyone had to get out of bed at four, and attend school afterwards as well. It was a great strain physically, but luckily we had the support of our families. They made sure we got to the interview locations on time. They were the greatest source of encouragement for the teachers.
(2) Student ability:
Due to the lack of experience in doing interviews, the students had to look to the teachers’ guidance in formulating proper questions. As for topic revisions, our solution was to having a meeting between the teachers and the students, to discuss and formulate questions, and talk about proper etiquette during the actual interview. Fortunately, when the students encountered a problem, they came to the teachers automatically for advice. Imperceptibly, the students increased their knowledge and skill.
(3) Problems during the interviews
Over the interview process with Mr. Barry Lin, we came to discover he is a very warm-hearted, talkative source of knowledge. When we had to reschedule due to time conflicts and to gather complete research material, he was very cooperative, and introduced us to many of the practitioners of Tai Chi to visit. We owe him our deepest expression of gratitude.
(4) Interview traveling arrangements
Due to the distance in interview locations, we had to get up at four in the morning to coordinate with Mr. Barry Lin and volunteer mom ???. Luckily, with their help, this problem was easily overcome.
(5) Language-usage of interviews
During the interview process, we met some elderly members of the Tai Chi teams, with thick and heavy country accents. So, we had to re-listen to the interview records many times to decipher the correct meaning. Because of the effort we put in, each successive interview we did became easier.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
No pains,no gains!Everybody GO! GO! GO! We learned how true the saying“why accomplish tomorrow what we can finish today”is. We always divided our work, and when one of us did not finish our part in time, we felt embarrassed and sorry to the group
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
The martial arts have become a school standard subject. During this process, we learned how to gather and manage material, work as a team, mutual communication and general etiquettes of life. We also learned how to use a camcorder, and various software to publish a website. Everyone profited much from this experience. At the same time, because our school is heavily influenced technologically, we can take the skills we’ve learned and apply them to other subjects.
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