1.Category: Local Attractions

2.Description of "Our Community"

Early Lujhou was prone to flooding due to its location. In order to avoid the flooding, the residents chose their abodes. The early namesake of “County above the River” for Lujhou originated from such. Its poor living conditions coupled with advantageous location of being close to Taipei city meant that most residents here were poor immigrants who sought to make a living in Taipei. The introduction of a myriad of cultures from other places created a diverse temple culture. Due to religious influences, the locals have developed a strong sense of identity and commitment to their homes. Enterprises sprouted and grew, and in the end a region rich in temple culture came into being. Master Liang-chuan Wang grew up with this background. The unique skills and proficiencies of the great Master is inseparable from his home, influencing his lifelong dedication to the protection and safekeeping of culture and cultural artifacts. Through this Cyberfair project, we hope to reinterpret and share Master Wang’s focus on interpersonal relations and friendships to replace the modern neglect of personal bonds. This would become a sprouting bud in the hearts of the people who came in contact with the Cyberfair project.

3.Summary of Our Project

Master Liang-chuan Wang is a witness and testimony to the modern development of Lujhou. His skills in sculpting, drawing and face-painting for Chines opera were inseparable from the modern developments of Lujhou. The choice of Lujhou City for the site of The Forbidden City Museum showed how Master Wang had contributed to local culture. Our topic, titled “The passion of relics and the beauty of human relationships”, allow the students to experience the waning attitude of respecting your teachers, regional identity, humanist culture and interpersonal relationship through the research on The Forbidden City Museum at Lujhou, the understanding of Quanzhou style sculptural art, and leading student interviews of art masters.

4.Our Computers and Internet Access

The school houses a complete set of IT equipment. Every class has a classroom computer. There are 4 computer classrooms and an information center in the library. The school’s network is a 100 MB optical cable. Our server has several servers with the Windows 2003 and Linux OS. Members of our team also have broadband or optical internet connections in their home PCs, and get in touch with each other through the school’s blog, web drive or e-mail.

5.Problems We Had To Overcome

Difficulties 1: Scheduling and differences in the time tables

Team members include students from the 5th and 6th grades. It is difficult to schedule their time. Student abilities also vary. It was difficult to coordinate team members during weekends, with very little time spent on group research at the museum itself. The Forbidden City Museum at Lujhou adopts an appointment system for visits. Students were only able to visit the museum during time slots on Wednesdays and Fridays, with each visit lasting from 2 hours to half a day. Collected information, and interview recordings and videos must be brought to school and organized during lunch breaks or active learning classes. Work distribution, exhibition preparation, making of posters and blog are work that need to be distributed in a relatively complex manner.

Difficulties 2: Limited abilities in Interviewing and Research

The three supervising teachers divided the 14 team members into 3 groups. Four 6th grade students were designated the “Interview Team”. Five 5th grade students in the A team were designated as the “Archival Artifacts Team”, with another five 5th grade students in the B team designated as the “Information Team”. There were significant differences between student abilities of the two classes. Even the 6th graders found research and interview work rather foreign. Almost two months were spent in the first semester trying to train student abilities. Earlier on, there were over 20 students in the group. But due to the complexity and difficulties in conducting research, several of them backed out, which also led to increased work difficulty for the rest. The final stage of research data organization is the heaviest work load for the students. The pressure of the deadline made us feel extremely stressed.

Difficulties 3: Attitude of the parents

It is difficult to schedule all the students to come to school to carry out research. Parents also raised their doubts and worried that this might affect their school work. After compromises from many sides, a consensus is reached to guarantee both the students’ rights to be educated as well as research progression. In the end, the parents themselves mostly support the rate of our progression. Some parents noticed that due to participation in the Cyberfair project, students acquired a more motivated and organized approach to learning, and showed remarkable academic performance in their own classes.

Difficulties 4: Contacting people in the community

The biggest difficulty of the Cyberfair project is that Lujhou City The Forbidden City Museum is a private museum opened only during the holidays, and one would have to make an appointment for a weekday visit. Hence, time slots available for us to make visits are very limited. Master Liang-chuan Wang and section leader Mr. Rong-ming Wang in the promotions group were both committed to cooperate with our research, and provided us with their greatest support in any related activities. We gained yet another benefit in that Mr. Wang put much emphasis on interpersonal relationship, allowing students to learn about many traditional rites of politeness and piety. We believe that these are valuable experience which would help our students’ development in the future.

6.Our Project Sound Bite

After a time of more than seven months, we are deeply moved by the efforts put in by our students. We also thank the other two supervising teachers Hsuan Wang and Ya-mei who made great sacrifices without complaints. These allowed our project to progress to our current status. Although perfection cannot be attained due to the time constraints, the harvest reaped from learning and working together with our students is irreplaceable.