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Our Community
Renewing the Sense of Community in the Fong Tian Area
What was known in the early days as the "Fong Tian" area includes the 3 present-day villages of Fong Shan, Fong Li and Fong Ping. This is the center of life in the Shou Fong Region of Hua Lian County. To the west are the looming mountains of the central mountain range of Tawian, and to the east are the string of mountains in the east coast range. Through the valley runs the Hua Lian Stream. The area has breath-taking tranquil landscapes. Throughout the region is the mark of wetlands. It's a land of rice paddies, ponds and lakes. It's a land of purity. The environment and water is pure. Places of pollution seem far away. Because of this outstanding environment, there is teaming wildlife" abundant and diverse waterfowl, butterflies and dragon flies. Everywhere you look in the Fong Tian area is full of life.
n the Japanese era, Fong Tian was a Japanese immigration village. Streets were laid out in like a grid. Inside the blocks, still, there is a lot of beautiful and unique Japanese architecture. The recent Fong Tian community project brings out the special features and allows all of Fong Tian to take on a fresh new look.
With Fong Tian's history as Taiwan's main source of jade, there was time when most every household was involved in jade processing. That time is only how a memory. However, in recent years, under government coordination, we've combined Fong Tian businesses and factories with tourism sources to allow the jade industry to have a new face as a focused niche tourism industry. When tourists come here, they can experience for themselves the excitement of hunting for jade in a clear stream and processing their own piece of jade. This, combined with visits to nearby recreational areas, like "Chao Feng Ranch and Resort," "Hualien Farglory Ocean Park" and "Promise Land Resort and Lagoon" creates a memorable visit, rich in experience and full of joy.
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An Overview of Our Project
FT area used to be
Because it had FT jade
So fan hua xing Sheng had a heyday
Jade production at that time was 60% of the global jade trade
Ccasue of this FTJ became "Taiwan's gem"
That's why this kind of good sit'n
.it was great, but lasted less than 10 years.
Now FT area who does jade business are only a few companies
Why such a big change?
Because what that happened?
This project is to dialing everyone to look get at glimpse at FTjade history up and down, Yuxhi how it formed de yuan yin.
And appreciate jade beauty. In HL so many beautiful stones, we sincinerely TW's treasuer introduce to you.
For this project we notice four main things happening
(1) Understand our community. The FT a is about 50 minutes car drive from our school. YJL gropu members , in order to complete this project. From such a long journey over 10 trips. Went all FT area overview, speak with quite a few people, toward FT area land and people and culture create a relationship and feeling. Moreover, learning process and community connected them.
(2) Learning Activities. Through this project, students can raise a few ability and experience. And these an't be gotten from classes. Through all these activities, students learned how to think through the main steps of a project. Think through the project overview to desired restuls get the materials collect,research,interview,photography,recording,organizing the material,create a web site,etc. multi skills as well as teamwork with separating tasks among the group.
Together they created a cooperative learning method. And in addition, took the experience and ability and moved it into the learning activities of the classroom. So such a diverse huo dong, not only enriched the students' learning content, but also extended their vision.
(3) content overview of the web site
"About Fong Tian" this part, before we really get into the main topic, we introduce the natl history and human culture of the FT area.
"Jade Cultural History" This is one of the main topics of this project. It introduces the history of mining FT area.
"Jade Mineral Background" This is one of the main topics of this project. It systematically introduces many kinds of knowledge about jade itself.
"Search for Jade" Tourism Ideas. We recommend trips how to arrange so you can have a rich trip with lots of new knowledge.
"Interviews" Sharing the real spirit of our interviews. Show the raw interview content.
"Classes" matching the school-based curriculum "stone" show the contribution of this project
"About the project" This project ompletion needs lots of types of people's support and we thank them for their contribution.
(4) Results on the web. We created a web to show our fruit. In the future we can with the school's special topic even more connected. We'll let the schools teachers, students and familky all have benefit. Even more we hope that through internet let the HL land, culture, bridge with the world. We sincerely invite everyone to come to FT to visit.
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Our web environment
The school as really good computer equipment. Now the school has 2 computer laboratories which are available for the students' computer classes. Each classroom has its own computer, the administrative teachers have their own computer and the special topic teachers also have their own. The library had three computers for students to use to search material. There are around 130 computers in the whole school, which really meets the needs of everyone.
Those computers that connect with the internet are on fiber optic lines. The others we have rented are on cable ADSL lines, and they work well as backup web computers. We have everything we need for multimedia hardware, including digital cameras, DV cameras, scanners and video equipment and more. From these we have everything we'd want for classroom and other use. The school also gives each student and teacher their own email as well as web-based hard drive space for personal material. This meets students' needs for web access.
In terms of our multimedia teaching, for each class level there is one multimedia cart. The hardware includes the computer box, speakers and projector. These allow our classes to make good use of extra multimedia materials.
Since the IT equipment really meets all our hopes, we really value each piece and each chance to learn. Through our work preparing for the Cyberfair, this has allowed our IT education to get really rooted to the school's classes and everyday life. We'd like each person to be able to use the web in their study activities. Even be able to contribute materials to the web.
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Obstacles we met and how we overcame them
(1) Our ability to conduct special research projects: As a group of 4th grade students, we've never before had the experience of conducting special research like this. However, through the continual advising and support of our teachers, a step at a time we could overcome the problems we met. We learned how to prepare research, do collection and organization of materials, do interviews, take pictures, record, post things on the web and" this is really the key here" to experience the spirit of teamwork. And all of these are things we wouldn't normally get in our regular classes.
(2) It was hard to get ahold of old photos. During the period of history when Taiwan was part of Japan, a lot of Japanese moved into the Fong Tian area. Photographs from that period are really hard to get ahold of. This was a real obstacle. And, as it happens with fate, luckily there is a Community Development Association, the Niu Li Association, which with an open heart made a lot of these photographs available to us. This was a huge and lucky surprise that sped up our process.
(3) It was hard to organize the material. The outline of this work was hard to agree on and we spent several weeks on just this work. After that we still had to divide into subgroups, assign topics and gather material, then carefully organize it.
(4) The exchange and sharing of information. As the process continued, our collected information grew and grews. Early on we used email to update information, but as it got bigger, it was harder to handle this way. Thanks to our advising teachers to set up a website to hold our material and a place for our discussions. This made it smoother and easier to compare and share information.
(5) Using freeware. This semester our school promoted freeware. Those in our group who had used Windows XP before now had to learn all over again. Thanks to our advisory teachers, again, for their patient guidance. This allowed us to really increase our IT skills.
(6) Time crunch. Here we were with all our regular class work and at the same time we added the work of this project. Both had to be done well. And we learned that web work takes much more time that we originally thought. Luckily, our teachers and family all gave us a lot of support and encouragement.
(7) The problems of field trips. Fong Tian is a distance from the school. Each time we go out on interviews of have a field trip activity it's a big task to arrange the transportation of a dozen or so people. Thanks to the teachers for the use of their cars and for being our drivers! This way each of our field trips went smoothly. And the preparation for interviews was all a new thing for us. Thanks to the teachers for supporting and advising.
(8) Limits to our budget. This special project had not special budget. Thanks to all our families for support and help and support of our advisory teachers. In this way it all went smoothly.
(9) Lack of time. This is our first time to join the Cyberfair. Noone in the school has joined this kind of activity before. As a result each member of our team has a sense of really being on mission to make sure our work really stands out. But the truth is, that time is limited. This meant that no matter whether it was the early morning study period, the lunchtime or winter vaction, you can see all of us at school, working hard. If we ever join this project again, out experience can be used to help that group, too. We'd like to think our experience can help classmates in the future.
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Key Reflections
Through joining this special research project, we have the following key reflections.
(1) We now have a deeper understanding of the cultural history and local products of the place we live" Hualian County, Taiwan.
(2) Each person on our team really raised their IT abilities through this project.
(3) We learned how to follow research steps and the ability to do independent study.
(4) We learned how to find the support we needed as well as get along well with others.
(5) Experience the power of working in a group and learn how to be good team members.
(6) Our group really developed a revolutionary spirit of holding each other up, and our connections with each other became deeper and more solid.
(7) We developed a kind of new ability and strength that can be passed on to the next groups who take on this kind of task.
(8) We've experienced another way to learn. Learning activites don't necessarily have to be in the classroom. They can be incredibly lively and fun. Regardless of the outcome of our work, we've now seen a happy and unique learning process.
(9) Through the process of preparing this web material we've been able to share Hua Lian's special products with everyone and we hope you find this useful.
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Project Overview 
Project Report