School: Changhua County Tianjhong Senior High School
    Tianjhong Township, Taiwan, R.O.C(Taiwan Provience)

5 students, ages 16~17 worked together to complete this CyberFair project on March 8, 2014. They have participated in CyberFair in the following year(s): 2013

Classes and Teachers: Yang, Tsung-Chieh Tsou, Mei-Ling

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://163.23.85.193/school/web/index.php

1. Description of Our Community

Location and Traffic: Changhua County, in central Taiwan, is an abundant agricultural county which is famous for various delicious foods and many ancient monuments. Many tourists are attracted by its beautiful scenery, and always come here on holidays. Changhua county is close to Taichung county in the north, next to Nantou county in the east, and beside to Yunlin county. In addition, because of combining mountain line and coast line, Changhua is also the transportation center for Taiwan Railroad. Our hometown, Tianjhong township, is located in southeastern area of Changhua County. The total area of Tianjhong covers 34.6056 square kilometers. In addition to Tianjhong train station, the Changhua high-speed rail station located in Tianjhong is currently under construction. In short, the transportation of Tianjhong will be more convenient in the future.

Population and Religion: The population of Tianjhong is about 43,324 till the end of April in 2012(Information of Tianjhong town hall). The main religious belief is Taoism (Mazu), especially the Qian-De Temple, which has built up here for more than two hundred years.

Specialty and School: The original name of Tianjhong is named after 'Tianjhongyang', which means the most primary crop in this town is paddy rice. In the past, roses were also one of the main crops in town. Besides, cream agriculture is one of the specialties in Tianjhong. Our school, Changhua County Tianjhong Senior High School, is the only senior high school in Tianjhong so far. The original name of our school was “Changhua County Tianjhong Junior High School” because we just enrolled students from 7th to 9th grade. However, for the joining of senior high school students from 2011, our school has been turned into a school of fully secondary education. Then, because of combining senior high and junior high department, our school name is also changed to “Changhua County Tianjhong Senior High School”.

2. Summary of Our Project

Changhua roundhouse is the only one existing in Taiwan. Because of its glorious history and importance on Taiwan Railroad, our team decided to do some research about it to let people realize it more, inspire their awareness of historical landmarks protection, and unite power of people to maintain the state of Changhua roundhouse well. By collecting information online, live investigating, interviewing key persons, we are surely to finish a great project!

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:2-3

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 school currently has two computer classrooms with the academic network connected, so we used computers at school to complete the most of our project as much as possible. Besides, all the members in our team also have personal computers at home, which can continue our progress of the project. In other words, the rest of the project was done at home.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

Although we consulted Mr. Yang and Ms. Tsou to direct us, the first thing we had to overcome is to search historical materials related to our theme. Fortunately, after constantly searching, brainstorming, and discussing, we had overcomed many problems gradually. Besides, thanks for the help of Mr. Lai and Mr. Yen, the problems of live investigating and interviewing were also successfully solved. The last problem is timing! Since we wanted to participate the cyberfair 2014, we had to finish Chinese version of our project first, and then translate it into English. We don’t have much time! Owing the help of Mr. Yang, we have reached our goal finally!

5. Our Project Sound Bite

No pain, no gain! Just believing yourself, and you can make it! Our main reason to do the project is to inspire people to cherish our local ancient monuments and unite people to protect them. Therefore, no matter how difficult the project is, we still tried our best! Although it took us so much time to finish the project, the experiences were unforgettable.

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

The main target of creating the website about Changhua roundhouse is to make others (non-natives, especially foreigners) learn more about the importance of the historical landmark by web surfing. Since Mr. Yang taught us computer information technology in school, we practiced the skills we learned in computer class, such as dealing and fixing photos and video clips, collecting related materials from internet, arranging paragraphs, and website creating to finish the project. In addition, the theme of the project also corresponded to our history and geography curriculums. So, we also consulted our teachers to gather more information about our theme. Our website may be not good enough, but we still look forward to others’ concern about Changhua roundhouse.

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

What information tools and technologies we use are as follows:

1.Personal Computer(Desktop And Notebook) 5 network-connected computers with Intel i3 CPU to deal with data 1 Acer notebook with Intel i5 CPU to arrange web pages and upload files 2. Oral interview Visit the natives to collect more information about our theme 3. Internet Surf the Internet to search more information 4. Digital Camera Take pictures and record the data during the inverview

5. Smart Phone Take pictures and record the data during the inverview Contact with the interviewees and team members 6.Flash Drives Store data and send to PC without network 7.Website Creating and Images Processing Software Namo WebEditor,Artisteer,Photo Impact,Photocap,FileZilla Client,Office software

Besides softwares, all the hardware tools are provided by ourselves.

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

Our direct teachers, Mr. Yang and Ms. Tsou, both live in Changhua city, and that is one of reasons we chose Changhua roundhouse as our theme of the project. Tianjhong township is close to Changhua city, and also belongs to Changhua county. So, we are all natives. The website we created not only stands for our ture emotion toward the local historical landmark but also presents a great introduction and tour guide about Changhua roundhouse for tourists (non-natives, especially foreigners). And, after interviewing Mr. Lai and Mr. Yen, we, students, also will spread the concept of protecting our precious by ourselves.

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

The website was established from our point of view, so people surfing our web pages not only could learn more about the information about the only roundhouse of Taiwan—Changhua roundhouse, but also were informed the existence of our school(Tianjhong Senior High School) and specialities of Changhua county. By the power of the website, more and more people will know that there is a unique roundhouse in Changhua county of Taiwan. This is really meaningful to us! For this reason, during the period of collecting information, people working for Taiwan Railway Administration are all willing to help us, such as Mr. Lai, Mr. Yen, and our teacher’s father, Mr. Tsou. At last, thanks for their helping, we finished this project smoothly!

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

Important persons we have to thank the most are Mr. Lai, Mr. Yen, and our teacher’s father, Mr. Tsou. They are all natives. Several days before the interviewing, Mr. Tsou got into contact with his colleagues, Mr. Lai and Mr. Yen, and asked them for helping us. Therefore, on the day of interviewing, Mr. Lai was our tour guide, and Mr. Yen demonstrated how to fix the brakes of locomotives. As Mr. Lai said, Changhua roundhouse is the only one existing in Taiwan, and it will vanish soon if we do not take good care of it. In other words, we have the duty to keep it well and be responsible for the history of Taiwan railroad. Therefore, our next generations will not forget Changhua roundhouse's great contribution on Taiwan railroad.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

After finishing the project, we are really surprised at the importance of Changhua roundhouse. During the early years, there were many roundhouses in Taiwan. But now, we just have Changhua roundhouse left. What a pity! If we don’ t care about something ordinarily, it won’t come back again after vanishing when we need it! And, with its disappearance, people won’t remember it any more in the future.