CyberFair Project ID: 7206

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International Schools CyberFair Project Narrative
Title: Attractions of Sydney
Category: 5. Local Attractions (Natural and Man-Made)
URL: http://www.wix.com/grotoloross15/attractions-of-sydneycity
Bibliography: http://www.wix.com/grotoloross15/attractions-of-sydneycity#!__enter/bibliography

School: Knox Grammar School
    Wahroonga, NSW, Australia

4 students, ages 14 years worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 15, 2012. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): First time

Classes and Teachers: Karen Yager and Michael Beilharz

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.knox.nsw.edu.au/

Project Overview

1. Description of Our Community

Our local community, the City of Sydney (Australia), is a vibrant and cultural city. The city is alive with both natural landforms and attractions (such as zoos), as well as man-made sites of cultural and historical significance. We have chosen to do category 5 for these reasons, and we believe that the discussion of this will be both informative and interesting.

2. Summary of Our Project

Our project supports the CyberFair theme to dream and unite in many ways. We want to unite the globe through the cultural, historical and natural attractions of Sydney, allowing many people to be amazed and enjoy them. We wish to unite the globe in the knowledge and appreciation of Sydney’s attractions. We also want to encourage young minds to dream about the future of tourism in Sydney, and across the world, and to be innovative and imaginative in the creation of ideas that will benefit the world in the future.

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:more than 6

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

There were a few problems we had to overcome. The main one was involving the construction of the website. There were various cases where it crashed, or loaded extremely slowly. In one case, we lost a whole page of information. We were able to overcome this with patience, in the knowledge that it would do no good in getting angry. Another problem was internet. At one stage, the connection crashed, forcing us to start our whole bibliography again. This set us back at least an hour. Finally, there was a transport issue that meant one of our members was late to our session. This meant we had lots of work unfinished. Luckily, we overcame all these issues and were able to produce a successful project.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

There were a few problems we had to overcome. The main one was involving the construction of the website. There were various cases where it crashed, or loaded extremely slowly. In one case, we lost a whole page of information. We were able to overcome this with patience, in the knowledge that it would do no good in getting angry. Another problem was internet. At one stage, the connection crashed, forcing us to start our whole bibliography again. This set us back at least an hour. Finally, there was a transport issue that meant one of our members was late to our session. This meant we had lots of work unfinished. Luckily, we overcame all these issues and were able to produce a successful project.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Our CyberFair project is extremely important to us, as our school is committed to becoming a global school where Knox boys can bridge cultures, beliefs and borders with respect and understanding. We are proud of our city of Sydney and hope that the rest of the world will feel the same.

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

Most of our courses require students to use technology to communicate information to an audience. In the NSW English Syllabus this is outcome 3. Geography features a study of local places, and English outcomes 5 and 7 require students to learn to be persuasive and convey a poiht of view. During the project, we learnt how to work under pressure and meet a deadline. We learnt how to communicate effectively to community members and businesses for information. We contacted every main tourist attraction organiser for information! All our pictures are copyright free and free to use, which means that we do not infringe on any rights. From this, we have learnt how important it is to reference work, not only to avoid consequences, but to show respect for those who created the information.

We worked collaboratively as a team drawing upon each other's unique strengths and skills.

A quality education system encourages students to become independent learners. The school only found out about this project two weeks ago but that did not stop them inspiring us to have a go. They value our knowledge and skills and invite us to have a powerful voice in education. They trusted us to work as a team on this project and complete it before the deadline.

We believe that the use of the internet has been beneficial, as it was easily accessible, allowing us to source all our information quickly. This saved us valuable time, as we did not need to search libraries looking for information that could be outdated. Instead of being given the content and information by a teacher, we could surf the information highway and apply what we discovered.

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Project Elements

1) What information tools & technologies did you used to complete your CyberFair project?

We used a variety of tools to create our project. We used four laptops for the majority of our work, which was to research, create our website, and write our information/project narrative. We also used our school phone and mobile to call attractions, to ask about economic and tourist data. We used a video recorder to create our introduction movie, computer software to produce this movie and make our bibliography, and pamphlets and brochures to assist our research. These tools helped immensely, as we were able to easily find all our information, and then compile and produce it. We already had all these tools available. By far the most used tool was our laptops, as we used these all the time to research and make our website.

2) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair project both on-line and in person.

We acted as ambassadors and spokespersons for our Cyberfair project both online and in person through making phone calls and emails to various organisation we felt could help us with the project. We made phone calls and emailed various radio and TV hosts to ask them for publicity for our website, as well as to see if they could run a story on our website so that the people of Sydney would know we were doing a website on the city. Unfortunately, we only received an affirmative response from Alan Jones on 2GB, whilst the others (7 News, 9 News and the ABC) did not respond or accept. On the call to 7 News, we told them that we were students working on an international competition, and we heard laughter on the other side before the call was cut! We also called up and emailed newspapers to ask for publicity for our website (Hornsby Advocate, North Shore Times, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and the Daily Telegraph), with us representing our Cyberfair project and talking about why we felt it should receive publicity. Most newspapers responded positively to our project and congratulated us on the work. The private organisations that we contacted included the Sydney Aquarium, Wildlife Sydney, Sydney Markets, Sydney Fish Market, Merlin Entertainments and Luna Park Sydney, all of whom were happy to provide us with information for our project when asked. Finally, the main government bodies that we contacted for information were the NSW Minister for Tourism, Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, NSW Board of Tourism, City of Sydney Council and the NSW Department of Trade and Investment, which all were again happy to provide us with information for the project. It was a daunting experience, talking to adults through official means about our project, but we are happy with what we achieved and are happy with the experience gained.

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

The main communities that have been affected by our website, and out tourism outreach, are Knox Grammar School – our school and the Australian public. The students of Knox now have a greater understanding of what Sydney has to offer to Australia’s tourism. The team has successfully shown to other people the importance of tourism to Sydney – and its effects. The students and peer of Knox are surprised of a lot of places and attractions that they did not know of that were very interesting Australia. Another group, competing in the Doors to Diplomacy, had expressed that our website was very insightful, and was describing the greatness of Australia. It has educated many of Knox’s students, and has given insight on Sydney’s attractions and landmarks. The Sydney community is a very large socio-economic group that has contributed in helping our website. Many of the members of tourism organisations kindly gave us some very insightful information. We believe that the community can be proud of the work that we have just completed and also learn and visit these tourist attractions. Asking many friends and family from different areas of Sydney, they believe that the site that we created, allows people understand the real culture of Australia. Overall, our team believes that we have positively impacted the community as it gave an insight to all the people, and can see its greatness.

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

Our project involved a mix of teachers, students and other helpers in the creation of our website on the local attractions of the City of Sydney. During the project, we received much help from our school, Knox Grammar School, with the Dean of Studies Mrs Yager and ICT Integration Master Mr Beilharz. Our team of four students also received much help from a Doors to Diplomacy team from our school running concurrently with, which were Jerson Balaton, Christian Holman, Michael Liu and Dan Schofield. Finally, we received much help from various organisations and government departments that we inquired for our research on tourism.

Special thanks are in order for Mrs Yager, who organised the participation of our team in the Cyberfair competition. She was involved with the administration and general guidance of our team, registering us for the competition and also giving us advice on how to handle the project. She was also of immense help when she organised a full day incursion for us to work on this project. We thank her sincerely for the help we received from her. Mr Beilharz must also be thanked as he assisted us with the IT aspect of creating the website, and was also involved with giving us a room to work in during the incursion. His help was greatly appreciated and we thank him sincerely for that. The organisations and government departments must also be thanked as their responses were of immense help. Throughout the project, we received responses from various organisations such as the NSW Board of Tourism, Sydney Town Hall, City Council of Sydney, NSW Department of Trade and Investment, Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Sydney Aquarium. We thank them all for replying to us and providing us with much needed official data to authenticate our website.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

We learnt that there were a lot of things about Sydney that the group did not know about. This was because the group had not visited all the landmarks and attractions in Sydney – mainly due to business in lives. Sydney has a lot to offer, and we believe that we can now explain what Sydney has to offer. There were other skills and morals we had grown in such as patience and teamwork. Having previously worked together, we had already known our skills and strengths. Although we knew that we would work together well, having spent the whole day together, we had to be patient and understanding that each of us were tired and would easily get frustrated. This taught us that we needed to rest a lot and not to get too stressed. We were very surprised that we were able to finish the website so soon after just registering a week ago. We thought that it would take a while for us to complete it, and we were even worried that we would not even complete it by the due date. However, we strived very hard and were able to complete it very easily. In the end, we were very happy with our website, as it portrayed the exact result we were looking for. The website, in our perspective, was excellent and was of a high standard.

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