School: Shanghai Community International School
    Shanghai, Shanghai, China

4 students, ages 15 and 16 worked together to complete this Doors to Diplomacy project on March 19, 2010. They have participated in Doors to Diplomacy in the following year(s): First Year

Classes and Teachers: Leonardo, Josefine, Brandon, Pohan

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://iweb.scisdragons.net/hq/

1. Description of Our Team

Our group consists of 4 people: Leo Magrin (15 years old), Brandon Park(16 years old), Pohan Tsao (15 years old), and Josefine Jacobsson (16 years old). We came together to work on this project because we think that the economy (especially in China) has changed greatly ever since the global crisis took place. We live in a country that has greatly affected world economy in the last few years and it has also been the center stage of world affairs. We chose to do this project because we think that a lot of people will focus on global warming and other affairs as they forget that the world's economy has been left in the dark. Everybody in the group is in charge of doing research while group members such as Leo and Pohan will focus on the website design, and Josephine and Brandon will focus on the action project. Leo and Pohan will focus on the Website because they are in computer science class and they understand a great deal about technology. Josephine and Brandon will focus on the action project because they feel more comfortable interviewing other people and they are very good at obtaining and putting together information. The great thing about our group is that we all come from different parts of the world which means that we all have different views. This is incredible for our project, because as we cooperate to complete this project we are able to reflect and express our own personal views into our work. Our group members are from South America, Scandinavia (Europe), and Asia. Our group coach will be Brian Negley, a business teacher at our school. We chose him as a coach because he understands a lot about business and economy, and he will be able to help us a lot with our project.

2. Summary of Our Project

Our mission is to come together and share our thoughts and views on how China has reacted to the Global Economic Crisis. We will investigate what changes business owners have made to their companies, whether job opportunities have been created after the crisis, and how the 2010 World Expo (which will take place in Shanghai) is going to affect Chinese economy. We want to have a closer look at the lives of migrant workers in China and we will analyze how the wealth gap has been rearranged. From poor, to extremely rich, we want to see what steps Chinese government has taken to prevent the economic crisis from having such an extreme effect in these people’s lives. Our mission is simple, we will unveil China’s response to the Global Economic Crisis and whether this change has made any difference to people’s lives.

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:not sure

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):

E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional): Most of people do not know what it feels like to live in a world where you can not go to Youtube or Facebook everyday. Living in China, where both of those amazingly popular sites are blocked shows how sometimes my group can have very limited connection to the Internet even though we have access to it at all times.

4. Problems We Had To Overcome

The major problem we have been facing was the limited access to some web sites because of China’s political policies. Some information we find on the Internet can be biased and Pro-China because Google and China came to an agreement that Google will not show anything offensive toward China. We cope up with this problem by using proxies to connect to certain web sites that we could not reach. We also had some problems coming up with a schedule to interview our friend’s parents on the related topic.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

This project means a lot to us and our community because it will shed some light on how the global economic crisis has affect China and how its government has reacted to it.

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

Our school, SCIS, has expects all students to know the ESLR’s (Expected School-wide Learning Results). One of the ESLR’s is “Global and Community Appreciation”. Doors to Diplomacy relates directly to that because it shows how we are connecting and interaction with the community that we live in. We live in a country that is currently the center stage of global economy and we wanted to take advantage of that by doing this project. We also worked in this project during our English class (the whole class participated, all students are required to be part of a project for Doors to Diplomacy).

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

We used 4 Macbooks, TV’s, our school’s library, newspapers, magazines, and email as a way to perform a survey/interview. These tools really helped us because they were a fast and easy way to obtain information. The school offered help by making many different books, magazines, and newspapers available for us in the library. The most interesting type of technology we used was the email. Instead of having to perform oral interviews we thought it would save us a lot of time to send an email with questions to the people we intended to interview. It worked out really well because we were able to obtain a lot of answers from a lot of different people.

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

We acted as ambassador online because we are creating a website in order to inform people on how China is attempting to overcome the economic crisis and whether it has worked so far. This website will not serve as a way to generate change, but as a way to inform people of the current economic situation in China. Hopefully this will attract a lot of people interested in global business, which currently has its sights focused on Asia. Maybe this website will also serve as a way to inform people in the Chinese government of how the people have reacted to the economic crisis. We also had a member of the American consulate come to our school and we served as in person ambassadors by asking him many questions about how China has been affected by the global economic crisis.

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

We haven't seen any direct impact until now but we hope that our project will shed some light into China's economy. This will help people find out how China government has helped its economy develop so quickly.

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

To create this project we have had our teacher, Ms. Koenig, help us. She has set guidelines, helped us get organized and held the project under control. Our advisor for the project, the history and economics teacher Mr. Nelgey will help us if we need it. We haven’t needed any long-distance help yet.

5) Discoveries, Lessons and Surprises (Optional)

From this project I think that the main thing our group has discovered is that planning is very crucial for a successful project. Doors to Diplomacy is a rather big project and without a well working group and respect towards deadlines problems easily occur.