School: Hwa Chong Institution
    Singapoer, NA, Singapore

4 students, ages 16 worked together to complete this Doors to Diplomacy project on March 16, 2012. They have participated in Doors to Diplomacy in the following year(s): NA

Classes and Teachers: Mr Esteban Juan Karplus, LeeZS, ChanDQ, ChiranMB, LiuTL

E-Mail contact:

Our School's Web Site: http://www.hci.edu.sg

1. Description of Our Team

Our team members consist of LeeZS, ChanDQ, ChiranMB and LiuTL. We are all 16 years old. We are mentored by Mr Esteban Juan Karplus, whom gave us ideas and help us vet our website. We did this project so as to inform audience about the impact science and technology has on international relationships. We had 3 students doing the research, one for each sub-topic, and one student working on the website.

2. Summary of Our Project

Our project is about science and technology and how they affect relationships between countries. The subtopics that we have come up with are Biotechnology and Global Health, Nuclear Technology and the Environment and Global Health.

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

We encountered many problems during the course of our project. The first problem is that none of us could create a website, and thus, we have to learn how to create a website. Even though it is only one person doing the website, we all learnt together. The second problem is time management. We had to find time from our schedule to do our project, as we were not given extra time during curriculum to do on this. After school we also have our co-curricula activities, thus making it even harder to find free time.

5. Our Project Sound Bite

Many people often take science and technology for granted, and also over look the impact science and technology has on international relationships. Thus we started on this project so as to inform the public on it.

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

We did this project together with our school's project curriculum, also known as Hwa Chong Institution Project Day, whereby we chose resource development and had to create a resource package. We learnt many new IT skills, especially on how to create a website. This would definitely be useful in our future projects and studies. The new content we gained about science and technology through this project would also help us and our school when we right our english essays, whereby science and technology is one of the topics tested. Internet has certainly made teaching and learning more accessible, as we can access it even at home, and we do not need the teacher to stand beside us to coach us anymore.

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

For content, we used internet websites,books we borrowed from the library and also newspapers. We also used videos from youtube to further supplement our content. For computers, we used mainly our own laptops but sometimes we would use the school computers too. For a website-hosting platform, we used wix as it is user-friendly even for us who do not know much about creating websites.

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

We will present our website during the Projects Day, whereby we get to share our projects with schoolmates. We will take this opportunity to inform them about how science and technology has affected international relationships. To further publicize our project, we plan to advertise our website on social networking sites like on facebook, and also ask our friends to spread our website too.

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

Our project will inform the public about how science and technology has affected international relationships, and our webpage has many interesting facts which have either been overlooked or forgotten. Also, when our schoolmates grow up, they might also base on our website use science and technology to improve relationships between countries! A lot of feedback we received are positive, some of which complimented us for the interactivity and fun facts of our project. This has certainly encourage us to work harder to further improve our project.

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

We would like to thank our mentor, Mr Karplus, for giving us ideas and suggestions as well as helping us vet our website. We would also like to thank our friends who helped us to find content, or also help view and comment on our website, so that we could improve the website to be an even better one.