School: Fu-Lin Elementary school
    Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan

11 students, ages 10-11 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 1, 2006. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2005

Classes and Teachers: Tzu-jiuan Chou

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.flps.tp.edu.tw

1. Description of Our Community

Reinforced concrete has been a key material in domestic construction. To which, sand is an indispensable basic element. In early days, it was easy to obtain and pretty cost effective. As the awareness of environmental protection had risen and for the policy of soil conservation…etc. Consequently, the northern Taiwan was in seriously short of supply. Causes the unfilial industry robber to pick without the processing sea sand and government’s failure to supervise, blocks of dangerous sea sand buildings were constructed and it was a serious issue that demanded discussion.

The original lot of Fulin Garden buildings, located in Shih-Lin district, was erected between 1979, 1980 and completed in 1981. A long rough passage with residents’ high expectation, which required much courage, patience and wisdom to overcome unforeseen difficulties to start the reconstruction project began right after the first case of house exfoliation and structure erosion had been found in 1994. It took years to complete this “mission impossible” and has set up the first national model of the successful reconstruction from hazardous sea sand buildings.

2. Summary of Our Project

Although Teacher, Ho Mei-Yi already 42 years old but her height actually only has 126 centimeters and her bones reaching as high as 90 year old . She can not be touched as she surely bumps like the sea sand house. Her name just like her personality, which has a true kindness of the God. You may surprise more and less when you see her. However, it should not arise your attention to her outlook but attracting by her open-minded, talkative personality and her excellent piano skill.

3. Our Computer and Internet Access

A. Percentage of students using the Internet at home:21-50%

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:more than 6

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

Our campus is wired with high-speed optical fiber and connects to Taiwan Academic Internet through T1 leased line. And ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) for home use

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

(1)Time-meet schedule and academic load: We usually worked on the CyberFair project in the noontime of Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. That included discussion, poster making and webpage creating. As there were only forty minutes for every time we met each other for the project, what we could accomplish was limited in the forty minutes. Therefore, we sometimes use the time of Wednesday afternoon or weekend to continue the work. However, there was not every team member could come together to work on the project on Wednesday or weekend due to family or extracurricular activities. We sometimes worked until very late afternoon on Wednesday; afterward, we still needed to complete our homework at home. This made us feel tired and stressful, but we were not defeated by the pressure. Our instructors also reminded us do not neglect our academic works because of the Cyberfair project, so everything was put on hold when there was a term test. That period of time of working on the project was compact but quite fulfilled. (2)Interview schedule and transportation: Every team member had different free time and we had to accommodate to the schedule of interviewees, so it was very hard to have one available schedule for everyone. But luckily, the people we would like to interview either live nearby our school or came to school for the interview. This decreased lots of our problems on the transportation. There was one special interview we had was we went to Taipei Shilin Cheng-En Church and interviewed the chorus and recorder playing group members there; we meanwhile attended the church activities and interviewed lots of teacher Mei-Yi’s good friends from church. That let us know more about what teacher Mei-Yi usually do and understand deeper about teacher Mei-Yi’s life. (3)Interview skill: Our first interviewee was Mrs.Mei-Yi Ho ,We were very nervous about our first interview. However, when the interview started, teacher Mei-Yi released our tension by her humor; and everyone was relaxed and got into the situation gradually. After several interview experiences, we had a better idea about how to conduct an interview. It was difficult to write down every word from interviewee, however we had a recording pen helping us to keep complete record for a later draft. Every interviewee always gave us support and encouragement; we learned a lot and received plenty harvest from every interview which broaden our horizons.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

By doing the project, we personally experienced what teacher said to us “this project is a challenge to our limits; try to overcome the challenge to increase our strength”. We also learned one’s harvest comes from hard cultivating by himself/herself. We explored a life story we never touched before. The process of the exploration made us understand deeper about teacher Ho, Mei-Yi and meanwhile influenced us about the views of facing difficulty in life. Now, we can share with others in detail about teacher Mei-Yi’s story and have others understand how she converted from depressed to courageous in her life. Through the project, we would like to remind everyone to cherish all the friends, relatives and things you have. We wish every person owns peace and happiness.

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

(1)The touching content: Our first understanding to teacher Mei-Yi was just from some news reports and articles, however teacher Mei-Yi, the parent of one of our school student, is close to us and worth us to explore her life. After thorough study of teacher Mei-Yi, we found she not only bravely face the distress but actively share her life story with all the people throughout Taiwan. Her spirit is worth learning for us. (5)Interact, share and unite with the community: Because we took teacher Mei-Yi as our project topic, we interviewed many related people. From the interviews, we learned lots of c situations between teacher Mei-Yi and her friends. That made us understand teacher Mei-Yi’s life story. We were deeply moved by teacher Mei-Yi’s dedicaton to the community. With the love of God, teacher Mei-Yi gained her self-confidence and learned she is not a mistake made by God. We obtained a lot of information about teacher Mei-Yi from interviewing the church chorus and recorder playing group members that made us deeply understand teacher Mei-Yi’s life. Teacher Mei-Yi enthusiastically provided us the information we need and told us her life story that fulfilled our interview activity. We wish such warm love like teacher Mei-Yi owns would be spread to every corner of the world.

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.

(1)The propaganda promoted in the school We shared teacher Mei-Yi’s life story with the students of grades three and four in our school by using the PowerPoint briefing made by us. The purpose of sharing the story is making the students understand how teacher Mei-Yi defeated depression and frustration and being courageous to face her life predicament. Through the propaganda of teacher Mei-Yi’s story, we hope children will learn her positive and bright attitude toward life. Besides, through the activity of “Talking about Mei-Yi” and the speech from teacher Mei-Yi, teacher Mei-Yi’s spirit has spread to all the students of grade three to five. Although the students did not participate doing the project, they are unconsciously influenced by her. (2)We keep thank in mind during the interview When we visited the church, teacher Mei-Yi not only conducted the chorus performance personally for us but also accompanied us all the way till the visit finished. Teacher Mei-Yi arranged many of her friends as our interviewee for us. Moreover, when she knew there are elementary school students would like to do the project about her, she was willing to accept our interview and provide us related information. Relying on all the helps from teacher Mei-Yi, our activities for the project progressed smoothly. Through doing the interviews for the project, we learned many people are deeply impressed by teacher Mei-Yi. Every interviewee always encouraged and praised us for doing the project, which let us feel proud to be able to join the project !

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

(1)Develop a diverse and alternative curriculum: The teachers conducting “The touching small giant” project did the best demonstration to interpret 'the teacher is curriculum developer'. The teachers successfully carried out a series of quest learning curriculum according to the school curriculum progress, the community features and students’ demanding. These curriculums crossed over the boundary of the textbook, letting the student experience personally the living society and opening the new horizon of the curriculum design for schoolteachers. (2) Innovative teaching features: The curriculum standard of Nine-Year Consecutive Education program stresses on the learning style of “self-determination, cooperation and exploration. If we would like to have students reach the learning style, teachers have to innovate their teaching first. That included deciding the topics by their own, discussing related problems, collecting data, compiling and analyzing information, carrying out activities, presenting report and creating web pages, being all explored and experienced by students personally.The series of leaning including on-the-spot observation, interview, the network data collecting etc., not only aroused the students’ interest, but activated the teaching. (3) Construction- the most meaningful school based curriculum : The process of “The touching small giant” project, from interview and promotion in campus for teacher Mei-Yi’s life story to web pages creating etc., contains abundant lessons for learning. That includes how to respect other’s feeling and how teacher Mei-Yi’s changed her thoughts and became positive toward life. After spreading teacher Mei-Yi’s story in our campus, many students showed high interest in teacher Mei-Yi and came to talk with us about her during the class break time. This showed the project activated the students and made their lives became more colorful. (4) Establish the good interaction between school and community: We have to appreciate teacher Mei-Yi for her enthusiastically support that made “The touching small giant” project could be conducted smoothly. In addition to having abundant harvest after interviewing teacher Mei-Yi, we built up with her a deep affection. When we encountered frustrations and felt discouraged, teacher Mei-Yi, the church friends and schoolteachers always gave us lots of supports and encouragements making us energetic to complete the project.

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

We sincerely thank several teachers as the following for their helps that have our project could be conducted smoothly and the content of the web pages we created became more exciting.

(1)Church friends: With the great help from teacher Mei-Yi, we put in a lot of different and precious information in the content of our web pages. Our interviewees: Mr. Chen?To-chia Chen , Yu-chia Chen?Teacher Xie ?Miss Li Rong ?En Xin, En Ji,Yun Yi?Miss Hui Fen Luo ; Miss Jia Yu Lin?Miss Mei-Mei Hui ?Miss Zhi-Zhen Liu ?Miss Yu-Hui Wang ?Miss Hui-Fen Zhang.Thanks very much for accepting our interview.

(2)Specialist: Doctor Hong accepted our interview and provided us some related information.

(3)Schoolteachers: Our school Principal Yu-chin Long always gave us encouragement; academic affair office chief Director Chin-lien Chen provided us many ideas; Teacher Chun Ying? Teacher Xue Yu?Teacher Bi Zhen?Teacher Ming Pong?Teacher Mei Zhen gave us supports and inspirations; teacher Tzu-jiuan Chou?Ya-tui Zhang?Yu-hui Wang programmed diverse activities and supervised and instructed our works; teacher Chun-chieh Zhuang and Feng-wen Lin assisted in carrying out activities. 6?The intellectual property rights of our web pages for the Cyberfair project . The most content of “The touching small giant” web pages was personally completed by “Fulin elite” from Fulin elementary school. We marked clearly the book titles and authors for the part of writings and pictures we cited form some other books, in order to respect the original authors and their intellectual property rights. We already advised and obtained every interviewee’s approval that the content of our interview was put on the web pages. We would like to appreciate here for the assistance of all the different materials that made the content of our web pages richer.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

(1)Discover the value of oneself While we were in the first meeting of discussing the Cyberfair project, teachers told us the most important thing of doing the project is letting us re-understand the values of ourselves. After doing the project, we had found the value of ourselves and re-known ourselves, and learned putting us in other’s place to consider for others. Hence, we knew our importance that is each of us is unique in the world. This thought made us contented, despite what the result is for the project. (2)Irreplaceable experience We had plentiful harvest from hard working for the project. During the period of doing the project, we certainly had many frustrations; such as we sacrificed vacations and every noon break in school. Although our teachers predicted in the beginning this hard situation we would have. Some team members withdrew from doing the project because of the very heavy load. That was a great blow to our morale. However, after working hard for the project, we realized this is an irreplaceable experience making us become mature and surmount our limits. (3)See the kindness of the world For the people helping with our project from different walks of life, we sincerely thank for their enthusiasm. Before starting the project, we did not expect we would have such enthusiastic assistances, like providing us information automatically, praising for our performance and admiring our research. Because of all these great helps, our earnest devotion got responses and we saw the warm of mutual help from people.