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1. Description of Our Community
Every life is unique and it should be treated and cultivated equally. Taipei City, where we live now, is 272 square kilometer. The population is up to two million six hundred and twenty thousand people and it is the biggest city in Taiwan. The caring for the handicapped, the facilities and regulations for the disables are receiving more and more notice. We really look forward that one day in the future, those facilities can be as convenient as mass transportation. Taipei Municipal Nanhu Senior High School is located in Donghu, a place with busy traffics. New MRT is now under construction. This is also the place where Chen Pao-han grew up. Expect Nankang Software Park is in the neighborhood, the education system is well provided in Donghu: Donhu Elementary School, Donghu Senior High School and also Nanhu Senior High School are all in this area. It is a good place combined business with humanity. And the construction of MRT will definitely give more convenience to the handicapped. Chen Pao-han graduated from Nanhu Senior High School, a magnificent castle built in June, 2002. It focuses on the development of information technology, foreign language, sport and ecology. Campus area: 31005 square meters. Total floor area: 78482 square meters. Average areas one student can use: About 39.24 square meters (top of whole Taipei City). Height of the building: 10 floors above and 2 floors underground (The highest public high school in Taipei City). Numbers of class: 15 classes per grade, 45 classes in school. Donghu, the place we are living, has various people and there are lots of thing every day. They, like stories, that reminding us how great it is to be healthy. We should take good care of our health and cherish our lives.
2. Summary of Our Project
Chen Pao-han is a patient of Spinocerebellar Ataxia (SCA). But because of his hard work, he attended Department of Library and Information Science in National Taiwan University. He is also the first student in Nanhu High School who won the ”President Education Prize.” He underwent numerous failure in his life. First, he spent nearly eight years to walk. Being rejected by the kindergarten, looked upon by others, and misunderstood by his teacher in the elementary school, he finally went to a senior high school he liked and became a freshman in National Taiwan University. Because of it, he knows best how the society look at the handicapped like him. We interviewed many people around Chen Pao-han to know better about his childhood and school life. Because healthy people like us hardly have any idea about this rare disease, it is hoped that more people will start to notice it: Spinocerebellar Ataxias.
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:more than 6
C. Connection speed used in the classroom:dedicated connection
D. Number of years our classroom has been connected to the Internet:4-6
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
School: There are three computer classrooms in the campus, all connecting to the mainframe with fiber optics, which is used to save our project web pages. We use Linux Server as our backup host. The mainframe is connected to the Taipei Education Internet Center through fiber optics. The internet bandwidth is 10mb. Students can surf the internet during lunch break or after school. Home: Most of us use ADSL (2Mb and 512Kb for download and upload respectively). We also applied a free space as our Internet hard disk. It has 100 Mb capacities so that we could store the backup copy of our homepages and was used as an internet hard disk.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
1.Unfamiliar with the main character: The first problem we encounter is we know nothing. So first we divided ourselves into groups. Some of us check the basic information about Spinocerebellar Ataxia. After that, we interviewed the teacher who majors in special education -- Miss Lai Jia-Yi. She is the teacher who knows Chen Pao- Han the best. She told us a lot about him, including his childhood and his painful recovery exercises that no one ever knows. Our information was authorized by the “Taiwan Muscular Dystrophy Association” We would also turn to the nurse in the school if we have any questions. 2.Different opinions Good communication between group members is very important. Everyone held different opinions and hoped his opinion can be adopted. So we had to discuss again and again to reach a conclusion. 3.Time coordination Coming from different grades and groups (art and science group), all of the members are under heavy pressure from our studies and extracurricular activities. So Lunch break or after school are almost the only time we could use for our meeting. Information collection was mostly done at home. We could hardly catch up our schedule during exam week.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
How amazing the Internet is! We can gather information all over the world. By surfing the Internet, we broaden our horizons and learn to see things with different aspects. However, not everyone is good at computer in the beginning. But with months of training and the approaching deadline, all of us are able to use computer to process the information. Though being faced with lots of problems such as time coordination, communication between group members, work distribution, and so on. With the help of the teacher and the members, we made progress every day. Sometimes we might also complain about the hard work or the limited time, but they became nothing compared with Chen Pao-Han’s suffering. He never complains his physical condition from the first minute he was born, always following his dream. His persistence reminds us that as long as we can draw more attention to the handicapped, any hard work is worthy.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
1. Life Education Chen Pao-han’s growing up is like a life education. What impressed us most is not only his never-give-up spirit but also his love and respect toward lives. He told us to make future plan as early as possible, and it is exactly what teachers always teach us. Take him for example, he has made up his mind to go abroad for further study. In the meanwhile he will also inspect handicapped facilities and policies in the foreign countries. That means he is going to represent Taiwan as an ambassador. Besides, We also had a chance to join him in one of his class in NTU. After interviewing with Chen Pao-han, everyone decided to study harder to go to a good college. 2. Information Education The highly-developed technology makes it very easy to gather useful information in short period. The design of homepages and photographs become easier, too. In the process of making our homepage, we completely merged information with education, which our school has always emphasized. With the aid of computers, we show our talent and creativity, which makes our learning more interesting.
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1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your CyberFair project?
1.Email, Telephone, MSN:Discuss at home, set up meetings, arrange activities and contact the interviewees. 2.Television:Watch the show “find hopes-interview with Spinocerebellar Ataxia patients” in public TV. 3. Computer classroom, media conference:Place and equipment to make homepages. 4. DV recorder?1394 cardand digital camera:Record and copy the interview and transform them into VCD format. 5. Recording pen:Record the contents of interviews and make drafts. 6. Scanner:Scan photos and pictures for further edit. 7. Software and programs(FlashMX?FrontPage2002 and etc.):Edit text, images and make homepages. 8. Books?newspaper?Internet browser(IE6.0):Gather information about Spinocerebellar Ataxia. Learn how to make homepages and Flash. 9. Tours and interview: We went on a tour in National Taiwan University,had better understanding about Chen Pao-han’s life and also interviewed many of his close teachers and classmates.
2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair project both on-line and in person.
Many classmates are curious about what our project is about. After our explanation, they thought what we were doing was really meaningful so they voluntarily collected information for us on the Internet. Therefore, if our web page could be browsed, more and more people will know SCA and cared about it. That way, more attention to the disease will be aroused.
3) What has been the impact of your project on your community?
It is believed that many people don’t know what Spinocerebellar Ataxia is. The web page that we made might not be perfect, but hopefully it can provide basic knowledge about this rare disease and draw more people’s attentions.
4) How did your project involve other members of your community as helpers and volunteers?
In order for us to have such a fruitful resource of interaction and interviews, we have to give great gratitude for Bo-han Chen and his family. They provided us with many iotas of his growth. Next, we have to appreciate Ms. Chen in Taiwan SCA Association for playing as the bridge between the association and us, as well as explaining the conditions and treatments for SCA. Other than this, we received tremendous amount of helps from interviewing the professors from National Taiwan University and teachers from Nanhu High school during their spare times. With all due respect, the zealous concerns from the teachers were overwhelming, as if they were tangible. From that, we learned the cooperation might highly increase the efficiency. In addition, we have to specially acknowledge the school that provided us with their facilities. Because of them, we had a wonderful environment to do the project. We will try harder for a better result in the future.
5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)
1. The importance of barrier-free environment Not until we started our project did we find how important barrier-free facilities are. Take our school as an example: We reserve some parking lots for the handicapped. In the elevator, we also have lower control panel with Braille to facilitate blind people. There are ramp for wheel chair, too. In the bathroom the light will turn on automatically when people step in it. However, despite all the facilities provided, sincere caring to the handicapped is even more important. After all, it is barriers in people’s heart, not outer surroundings, that needs to be demolished most. 2. The importance of team work If any of the members did not finish his job on time, the whole group would like a machine that miss one part and can not work properly. Thus we learned how to negotiate to meet everyone’s schedule in order to finish our work in time. The making of our project gives us good a chance to put what we have learned into practice. We became better at thinking and communicating through numerous meeting, presentations, and interviews. In addition, the interaction among members is also very important. A perfect project needs everyone’s active participation and various viewpoints. During the process, we encourage each other, and deeply feel how important cooperation is. 3. The use of information technology Through making our own web page, we learn a lot about web page design, edit, as well as using multi-media equipment such as recording pens and digital video cameras. As what has been mentioned, we did merge “information” with “education”, which our school has always emphasized. With all of the above, we deeply feel that the more we participate in, the more we can learn.
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View our CyberFair Project
(Project ID: 4613)
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