School: Maryknoll Fathers' School
    Hong Kong, , China

5 students, ages 16-17 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 15, 2012. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2009

Classes and Teachers: Ms To Yuen Man

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.mfs1.edu.hk/

1. Description of Our Community

Hong Kong is one of the two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China, it is a place which well-known for its international financial center, free economy and incorruptible. In the early days, Hong Kong was just a little fishing port with small population. But after the First Opium War, Hong Kong turned into a British colony for 100 years; therefore the interfusion of western and eastern cultures had appeared. Because of the rapid growth of the population and development, Hong Kong has turned into one of the most secure, prosperity and high living standard cities in the world.

With a land mass of 1,104 km2 and a population of around seven million people, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Moreover, the lack of space effectuated the denser constructions, which developed the city to a modern architecture center and the world's most vertical city. Furthermore, Hong Kong’s government had paid attention to the society and takes care of what people need, therefore the infrastructure and public facilities are all well-developed.

If you come to visit Hong Kong, you will probably amazed by the diversification and unique of its culture, from art to language, food to politics, you will find out lots of funny features among them. Moreover, countless of tourist attraction, countryside scenery, plus shopping and delicacy, it attracted lots of visitors from all over world to come and experience.

2. Summary of Our Project

One of the interesting characteristics of Hong Kong related to our project is that, you can find different unique streets around Hong Kong which only sell one type of good. You may wonder how these shops will think of such silly idea of gather all the competitors in one street, but the truth is through the competition, those streets started to become famous and it attracted lots of customers. As the time goes by, they no longer make struggle to get survival, but to cooperate with each other to build a better place for all of us. We chose four streets: Apliu Street, Lee Tung Street, Sneakers' Street and Wing Lok Street as the main focuses of the project.

Apliu Street, a place for buying up-to-date and cheap computer components and accessories. You can also sell your used electronic stuff and purchase second hand devices there. It’s a great place to search for the missing piece you need for your gadgets.

For Lee Tung Street, it’s a former place which gathered a lot of printing houses and people used to purchase their wedding cards there. However, because of the reconstruction of that area, this street has vanished since then. People had tried their best to protect it and the government eventually agreed that to rebuild a similar one.

Sneakers' Street is a place where full of shops that you can buy different kinds of sneaker at a lower price. The workers there, no matter in which shop are always friendly and give you good advices of what suits you the best.

For Wing Lok Street, you can buy various types of dried seafood there for making delicious dishes. Although most of the shops there are small scale operation, but you will definitely find the tasty ingredients you need over there.

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

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

One of the major obstacles is research on the historical landmarks. Nowadays people often prefer to search for information via the Internet. However, information collected from the Internet may be incomplete and unreliable. We search for information with a bibliography and other sources to ensure the quality of the information. Besides, the information of the historical landmarks are few. Therefore, we took a long time to verify the information before making use of it.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

The International Schools CyberFair enriches our knowledge and the culture on the historical landmarks. It also develops our sense of belonging to our community. We choose Lee Tung Street, Sneakers' Street, Wing Lok Street and Apliu Street as the content for the project. These streets have a long history and full of traditional feelings. We can find dream and unite concept in these places. It gave us not only the learning opportunities, but also facilitated the relationship among group mates.

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

Our Cyberfair project address that we should preserve some historical streets which cross between the Chinese and Western culture.

These historical streets captured every vibrant moment of the city and let the next generation to have a ‘taste’ of our past; it’s the best way for students to learn who they are and where they come from.

These streets fit in our required district as these places are the most famous place and popular places in Hong Kong, we all familiar with these streets and the Hong Kong history.

We learn different new skills from this project, like we try to find out the detailed history, the special characteristic and the behavior and the special spirit and attitude among Hong Kong people. We improve our problem-solving skill and boost our team spirit through discussing and finding our problems.

The group concepts we are to practice is that we learn to understand each other thought and difficulties in our mind. We cooperate with each other and communicate all the time.

The specific idea we learn is that preserve historical heritage. We realize that the key to know our identity and our living place is through the old buildings, we can learn our ancestors and our parents life so as to bridge the gap between two generation.

The project fit into the requirement for my school and class because there is one computer in each classroom and students can also access to the internet in computer rooms and library during lunchtime and after school. And the theme of our website is attractive to them as it is closely related to us.

The role we play in our school community is that we are senior students of the school, we are responsible to instill the right thought to students.

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

We use 5 computers, telephones, TV and radio stations, sound recorders, computer software like Dreamweaver and Firework use to complete your Cyberfair project.

The computers help us to access to the internet and search the background information for the places. We use telephones to communicate with each other as we may not have time for face-to-face meeting. We also learn the history, thoughts and spirit of Hong Kong people. Let us to know and understand the uniqueness of our place. We use sound recorder to record our voice for the pronunciation of the Chinese words of the name of those streets to let foreign visitors find the places easily when they come to Hong Kong. Dreamweaver helps us to compose the website and Firework is used to create all graphics.

We locate each tool in the layout of the website, the pages of each street. The most valuable tool is that Dreamweaver and Firework as they help us to design the layout according to our preference.

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

We all use different ways to connect people in our community, through internet and activities held on school. Some students may think that knowing history is boring and dull; they have no interest on it. We have to create some games and quizzes to reward them and give incentive for them to move on and encourage them to explore more on it.

People in our school are impressed what we are doing as they think it is meaningful and we point out the thing that people not being concern but important thing. They express their feeling to us that they will find further information on other significant historical building in Hong Kong can explore more on this ground. They are impressed by this project and we achieve our aims that raising awareness of preserving our memorable heritage places.

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

Our project is about the street of Hong Kong. It can be a linked between modern street and past. In the past, streets were not only about shopping centre or restaurant, but the street was specialized in one kind of good. Sellers met the buyers’ need that let the buyers to compare the price. Moreover, sellers took care of others store if the others own was in need. Our project reminds Hong Kongers of the history and tradition of the streets. Nowadays, people focus on efficiency and seldom look back for the good old things. We bring out the spirit of helping each other throughout the project. Furthermore, they bring home to the audience the value of dream and unite. People will be impressed by the power of unite reflected from what have been happened on the streets. Demolitions, rebuild occurs, but the spirit of dream never disappears. No matter in the past or modern day, people never stop their pursuits of dream. This encourages us to dream bravely, and more importantly, to live up to it. People in our community certainly will learn more about the streets around us and be amazed by the history of the streets. Besides teacher, our group has asked our friends and family members to look at the website, and they are really helpful and gave a lot of suggestions. These all suggestions help us to improve our ideas and website. We received many useful feedbacks. Some said it helps them to remember the good days and some said learnt lot of new things. As there were comments about not much photos of the street, we have done modification.

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

We would like to express our thanks to our adviser and people we have asked for advice. First of all, our adviser has given us many suggestions and technical support. At first, we were not familiar with building website, however, with her support, we have learnt tons of skill and tried our best to do this project. Our adviser taught us how to deal with the problem in a most suitable ways and using the appropriate methods. When we asked her to look at our website, she help us to find out lots of careless mistake. It is no doubt that without her, we cannot finish the website so perfectly. Secondly, we would like to thanks the people who we have asked advice for and influence us a lot. They were so enthusiastic and gave a lot of brilliant ideas. When we asked them to give some suggestion for the draft of our website, they discussed actively and finally came up with excellent ideas. When we asked them to view our built website, they gave us many feedback, and some of the view we have never thought of before. Last but not least, we would like to thanks again to the helpers and volunteers involved our project, especially the people we have interviewed. In order to obtain more accurate information, we have interviewed our family members and relatives about the four streets as they have the experience of living in era that the streets still have not changed.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

Discoveries: Have you ever tried to find the history of the streets around you? It is a great discovery that the ordinary streets around us can be so extraordinary. Not only the characteristic of the streets is special--the spirit of Chinese gather sellers who sell the same goods in the same street--but also the power of unite they performed. Sellers will not envy because others have more transactions, they will take care of each other, and they will improve the quality of their goods in order to enhance the attractive towards the customers. Lessons: Will you feel angry when you are compared to someone better than you? Teenagers nowadays often feel upset when their parents compare them to other teens. And so do us. However, after finish the project, we have learnt a lesson from these four special streets in Hong Kong--never afraid of comparison and it will make you upgrade! Surprises: Where will you go when you want to buy a good? For young people, shopping center will be the best choice as it contains every kinds of goods and very convenient. Nevertheless, to our surprises, people in the past will choose good-specific streets. Shops in the streets will sell only one kind of goods. How can sellers survive in this high competitive environment? How it benefit customers? How will the relationship between each seller like? These questions raise our interest to study this topic. Do you want to know the answer? Let’s visit our website!