1. Description of Our Community
Our Community is the people around us with no discrimination of age, color, caste or creed. We want the younger generation to realize that we should have a community with high moral values, good education and a great social responsibility. Human values and a caring nature should be enforced in their minds and hearts right from their childhood. A sense of belonging to the people and place will bring out wonders to the community. Community is not defined by boundaries. The entire human race is one community spread over the earth. It is the duty of everyone to respect the culture and traditions
2. Summary of Our Project
Our CyberFair project is about the Local attractions - Natural and Man-made. We divided the students into groups and they visited most of the places and collected the details about the importance of the place from the people living there. Most of the language in the website is their own and from the details collected live. Our city Madural is called as Temple Town and it was the capital of ancient rulers. So we find masterpiece architecture in temples, palace, caves and buildings. We have natural elements in its beauty – waterfalls, hills and forest. The project students had earlier gone for trekking in the forest and they have used the details. The theme park is a favorite picnic spot of the city. It is really amazing to see the students realize that they understood the attractiveness of the city they live during these three weeks. When the students talked with the people who work and live near the places that they visited for the CyberFair project, they understood the importance of the place. The students organized a School Meals Day and added this to the project. We organized a prayer meeting for the MH370 flight that went off the radar. The students have visited all of the local attractions detailed in the website .
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:2-3
E. Additional comments concerning your computer and/or Internet access (Optional):
We have broadband connectivity of internet. We had to share the computers among the students.
4. Problems We Had To Overcome
Time was the factor that affected us most. We came across the details of the project in the last week of February. We wanted to participate as we felt this is a good exposure tot he students.
We wanted to add Flash to our website, but we were not trained in that. So we used the Slideshare. The hosting that we selected had page restrictions for the free usage. We did not know this when we started. Then we wrote to them and they immediately removed the restriction and we were able to proceed.
5. Our Project Sound Bite
The participation lifted the spirit and confidence of the students. The school is happy that the children have great exposure.
6. How did your activities and research for this CyberFair Project support standards, required coursework and curriculum standards?
The Category that is selected by us does not fit into our regular curriculum. We were encouraged by the school authorities and our parents to visit the local attractions around our city, Madurai. All of them encouraged us to speak out and explore.
We learned to handle the digital camera and use the GPRS fixed in the school vehicle. We worked on the Software Photoshop. We understood how to create blogs and add content. We also realized that we need to gain knowledge about a place before visiting it. We learnt how to search in Google for specific keywords that best describe the place. We learnt how to use video and to record, retrieve and upload in the website. We are now thorough how to enter the details in Microsoft Word, run Spellcheck. We divided ourselves into teams and selected a team leader. We prepared the list of things to do and we agreed upon who has to do what. We checked the work done before uploading in the blog. When we started to work on the details of a particular place, we thought we knew everything. While we discussed and compared our notes, we realized there are different views of the same concept. So we discussed everything among ourselves, confirmed with our teachers / parents, before executing our plan. We need to submit an activity every year in our school apart from the academic program. We will be submitting this project as our activity. After meeting and communicating with many, we feel there is a maturity in our behavior. We have leant to listen to others, able to organize plans and execute them. We need to check every details to achieve perfection. Using internet is a quick tool to gain knowledge. We are able to browse different sites for the same details and there is no limit for reference and we get ourselves tuned to the flow of the results. There is tremendous saving of time.
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