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1. Description of Our Community
Taiwan is a country made up of islands, the major one being Formosan and is situated in the Pacific Ocean, off the southern coast of mainland China by 160 kilometers (100 miles). The tip of Taiwan points toward Japan and Korea in the north and is close to Hong Kong and the Philippines in the south.
Shaped like a sweet potato, Taiwan is 394 kilometers (245 miles) long and 144 kilometer (89.5 miles) wide. The Central Mountain Range lies across Taiwan, two-thirds of which is covered with forests and the rest are hills, tablelands, coast plains, and basins.
Separated by the Taiwan Strait from China, Taiwan has been a marine freight, transportation, and international trading hub for hundreds of years. Sugar and tea from Taiwan were in great demand all over the world. However, nowadays Taiwan is one of the world’s largest producers of information technology hardware, coming in third after the United States and Japan. Furthermore, Taiwan ranks among the largest manufacturer of IT products in production such as laptops, monitors, motherboards, and scanners, which account for more than 50% the world’s market.
2. Summary of Our Project
Taiwan’s products have been transformed from inferior goods to boutiques. That definitely has its back story. In this project “MIT Story”, we investigate the change, and reveal a wide variety of Taiwan’s products. We look forward that everyone can support MIT (Made in Taiwan) products.
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):
We utilize Internet ADSL for the purpose of teaching and digitalized administration. Besides, NT Server and LINUX Server offer all kinds of Internet services, i.e. WEB, MAIL and FTP.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
The topic focused on industrial and commercial boutiques. It was not difficult to search for information related to it. As students, not only did we have to go to school during weekdays, but took part in school events such as school anniversary and had experimental courses to complete. Besides regular school work, we got a considerable amount of work from carrying out this project. That was rewarding even though we often caught up on our research work on weekends. Afterwards, we realized that Taiwan’s boutiques are intrinsically interesting and meaningful. This helped overcome the significant burden of school work. We gained an unprecedented sense of achievement in this project.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
One thing worthwhile mentioning is the transitional feeling we had when looking for photographs. Often in the past, we didn’t take the time to observe old items, and even felt that they symbolized a backward life. For this project, we searched for photographs representing different generations of Taiwan. Since then, we have realized that our grandparents and parents faced a life of hardship. A life they lived to the fullest regardless. However, nowadays, people love the new and loathe the old and change their possessions in an instant. This attitude is completely different from that in the past. We re-examine our attitude towards material goods and start over to look at more items carefully.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
This project is linked with subject matters including Chinese literature, Language Arts, History, Civics, and Fine Arts. It also involved more than 20 teachers and staff.
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