Project Narrative
Title:
Huarui Tibetan
Category:
Community Groups and Special Populations
Website:
http://www.yellowsheepriver.com/~gs000061/2007/
School:
Westland Junior High School
School Website: http://gs000061.edu.17888.com/
Completion Date:
March 5, 2007
Team name:
Tubote Team
Teachers:
Pu Cheng, Joy Tree
Students:
Niu Dang-zhi, Shan Jian-lin, Zang San-jie,
Gao Ji-li
Email:
pc59159@sina.com
Project Overview
1. Category: Community
Groups and Special Populations
2. Description of
"Our Community":
We live in Westland Village, Tianzhu Tibetan
Autonomous County in Gansu Province, China.
Tianzhu is the main area where Huarui Tibetans
live, and it is far away from Tibet Autonomous
Region, where most Tibetans live in China.
Tianzhu is the first autonomous county in
China, and it is the hometown of white yak.
The population in Tianzhu is about 80,000
and the percentage of Tibetan is about 30%.
Different from the culture in Tibet, Huarui
Tibetan culture has its own characteristics.
3. Summary of Our
Project
The theme of our project is Huarui Tibetan
Culture, and we planned to choose daily things
beside us but easily ignored as our research
object, such as language, religion, costume
and daily life. Through a serial of interviews,
we found how special and brilliant our culture
is. And since Huarui Tibetan is a minority
in local area, we felt more responsibility
to protect our culture in future.
4. Our Computer/Internet
Access
We use ADSL to access to the Internet, and
the speed is 10.0Mbps. We have only one computer
to access to the Internet. The students don't
have computers at home. To reduce the cost
of accessing to the Internet, we learned to
make more efficiency when we use the computer.
5. Problems we had
to overcome
Huarui Tibetan Culture was too big a topic
for us, but although we live in Huarui Tibetan
area, we really know little about our own
nationality. The first problem was that we
didn't have even one book about Huarui Tibetan
in our hands. We had only one computer to
access to the Internet, and we had to control
the cost of accessing to the Internet. So
we had to find other ways to solve it. The
Tibetan language teachers in our school had
to give up much rest time to answer our questions,
and we even wrote to the mayor of Wuwei City,
where our county belongs to, to ask for his
new book. The host in Shama Temple accompanied
us for a whole day to introduce Tibetan Buddhism
to us. Every noon, we would study for one
hour.
The other problem is that since we live in
the village, and never go out of the mountain,
we don't have enough confidence to participate
in an international competition. Fortunately,
our teacher kept encouraging us, and we really
found much joy to participate the competition.
Other problems such as time limitation - we
can only carry out the project at school,
since we live far away from the school and
we don't have computers at home. And the problem
like we had to walk for long time in bumpy
road, all of them we have overcome.
6. Our Project Sound
Bite
This chance of participating in
CyberFair made us pay so much attention to
our own culture, and we feel quite proud to
be a Huarui Tibetan. We hope our webpage
could open a window to let more people know
about our nationality.
We learned to unite and cooperate, and all
team members got deep friendship from the
program. And we learned the importance of
helping others from the help that others give
us. And we learned that caring about others
is more important than learning knowledge
in text and getting better performance in
examinations.
Project Elements
1. How did your activities
and research for this International Schools
Cyber Fair project support content standards,
required coursework and curriculum requirements?
Our research related to different subject such
as Tibetan language, religion, arts and so on.
We visited everywhere of our community such
as temple and herdsman's home. We got the help
from all kinds of the society and learned more
that could not get from the textbook. And we
also learned how to collect information and
how to talk to others. All these abilities will
accompany us for a whole life.
2. What information
tools and technologies did you use to complete
your International Schools CyberFair project?
1. Hardware facilities: one computer, one digital
camera (donated by Yellow Sheep River Project),
one tape recorder, one scanner, and one flash
disk.
2. Computer software: Dreamweaver, Photoshop,
Microsoft Word, CuteFtp, IE
3. Books: donated by the mayor of Wuwei City
4. Internet
5. Oral interviews
Above all, computer, oral interview and digital
camera are most helpful to us. Since we can
use computer to access to the Internet to search
for more resource and use interview to record
real life. For digital camera, it helps us to
show pictures to people.
3. In what ways
did your students act as "ambassadors"
and spokespersons for your International Schools
CyberFair project both on-line and in person?
The students talked to people to the community
and let them know the competition. They not
only collected the information through interview,
but also used the information they learned
to talk with local people about the culture
of Huarui Tibetan. This helped more local
people know about our own culture.
On the other hand, the students emailed to
donators (One student of our team is getting
donation for tuition) and participants of
Yellow Sheep River Project. People from Taiwan,
Tianjin and the USA visited our school in
2006, and helped the school a lot.
4. What has been
or will be the impact of your project on your
community?
We wrote to the mayor, and introduced the
website of our project to him. He is also
a Huarui Tibetan, and felt quite happy that
young students are studying the culture of
our community and encouraged us.
Local people in the community, especially
those old who don't have much knowledge know
the name of 'Huarui' from our project, and
they may encourage more to their children
to learn Tibetan language and culture.
People from all over the world will get the
name of 'Huarui' after reading our website,
and may have the interesting to visit our
community.
5. How did your project
involve other members of your community as
helpers and volunteers?
Thanks for Yellow Sheep River Project, we
got computers and digital camera from this
project, and employees of this project helped
us to register and participate in the competition.
The mayor of Wuwei City- Mr. Yonghong Zhao
offered us a book of Culture Under Snowy Mountains
and encouraged us.
The schoolmaster Mr. Baolin Yang and the accountant
of our Education Area Mr. Zhaoxin Guan who
gave up much rest time to support our project
All interviewees such as the Lama in Shama
Temple and the parents of the students, they
welcomed us warmly and supported us without
any reservation
Mr. Wilson Lee in Hong Kong, he helped us
on revising the translation.
6. Discoveries, Lessons
and Surprises
Discoveries - As we carried out the studies,
we found that Huarui Tibetan culture is special
and brilliant, we feel more interesting to
learn it and protect it.
Lessons - We should make full preparation
before go out to interview, or we may get
nothing. Click here to read the related story.
http://www.yellowsheepriver.com/~gs000061/2007/story_2.htm
Surprises - When we got the letter from the
mayor, we were surprise and excited.
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