International Schools CyberFair 2000 Project Narrative Local Customs Project Information About Our Site 1. Link to our CyberFair 2000 Entry 2. Link to our School Home Page 3. Date of Project: 21st March 2000 4. School: "Duiliu Zamfirescu" School Str. Tineretii nr. 2, Focsani, Vrancea, Romania 5. Teachers and Classes: Doina Marga Zait, Margareta Roman, Emilia Nestor, Luminiţa Ciocaldau, Doina Boboc, Profira Zorzolan, Mariana Guzu, Ioana Vasuianu, Lazar Fanuta; 4 classes: I C, III A, V D and VIII D; Project Coordinator: Petru Dumitru. (See Project Team) 6. How many students worked on this project? 127 7. Their ages were: 7-15 years of age 8. Project Contact Email: petrud@estcomp.ro

Project Overview

1. We entered our Web site in CyberFair Category: Local Music and Art Forms

2. Description of "Our Community" See Our Introduction

3. Summary of Our Project: The main goal of our project is to preserve our own customs and traditions as an important matter of community culture. Students were encouraged to describe the customs and traditions from our region. In this way, they learnt how to respect the folk culture. The project tries to cover as many different traditions as possible that occur during people's lives, as well as in their surroundings: regional, religious, or related to solstice, harvest, winter. Interviews with local community members -parents, grandparents, or relatives- have been very useful, as they gave the opportunity for both teachers and students to learn together.

4. Our Internet Access: Our school has a slow dial up connection (9600), Local Area Network, paid by the students' parents. Our online working is limited to 10 hours a month. In our school there is a computer lab including a server 486 DX and other 8 computer stations without hard disk. Romania has just started a special program "Computers for Schools" to supply our schools with computers during the next 10 years, but it has been temporarily stopped because of the economic status.

5. Problems We Had To Overcome: There were a lot of technical problems during the project work. We asked some people from our community to help us to scan the drawings and pictures, to test the midi files or to use adequate software for images such as PhotoShop. Thanks to Est Computer Company and LUFO Center we were able to design our web project page. Also, Valahus Company provided us a double computer dictionary Romanian- English, and Connex Romania provided us a mobile phone for 10 hours/ month free access Internet, in order to be able to participate in Peer Review Activity.

6. Our Project Sound Bite: Children involved in the project created bridges between past and present in which each of them reflects his inner connections with the world, and events coming from outside. In this way they learnt to build a future in which we can live safely and communicate regardless of our differences.

Project Elements

1) How did your activities and research for this International School CyberFair project support your required coursework and curriculum requirements?

We have chosen this project category because its contents coincided with the optional curriculum of the school decision area, named Global Learning. In our vision this subject combines Arts, Language, Social Studies, Literature, Computer Science, History, Geography and even Music.

The students interviewed relatives or other adults in our community about how they take part in some traditions in our region. They ask questions about the specific ways in preserving them. Then students by the help of the teachers described the folk customs, traditions or festivals celebrated by their parents, grandparents, or relatives. In the next step of the project the students illustrated the web page of the project with drawings, photos, computer graphics and midi music files representing Romanian authentic music. In this way children learnt to use adequate soft to publish their work on the web.

The quantity and difficulty of evaluating and processing information in this "age of information" makes people value traditional and oral knowledge more. We hope to show how the new technologies and Internet can be used as a tool through which this authentic, first hand oral information can be shared internationally and easily publicised.

The cross-curricular theme involved oral representation and stimulus as well as documents studied in History, Geography, Languages, Literature, Arts and Music. We organized the work according to the deadlines given by International Schools Cyberfair 2000.

The project included regional research, interviews, photographs, reports, linguistic adaptation of the documents, selection of literary texts, historical and cultural studies, traditional reports, artistic studies, creative writing, HTML programming, dealing with electronic pictures, organisation of displays and exhibitions.

2) What information tools and technologies did you use to complete your CyberFair project?

Hardware

PC Computers
Clasic cameras
Scanner

Software

Adobe Photoshop
Netscape Communicator
Sound Impression
Valahus Romanian- English Dictionary
WordPad

The technologies and tools helped us to edit the texts, to create the midi files and to include the pictures. The texts and links were easier incorporated using Netscape Composer, the favourite HTML editor of the students. The interviews were summarized in Romanian and then they were translated into English. The results of the interviews were compared with some articles from the custom books in our library. We realized that students discovered new specific ways to celebrate the festivals and traditions by their interviews.

Our computer lab has been donated by Soros Foundation in Romania 6 years ago. We weren't able to use Adobe Photoshop or the scanner in our school and we were hosted by LUFO Center, a big lab for the highschool students in our town. The license for Valahus Dictionary has been donated by Valahus Company, thanks to Mr. Petrica Ghiurca.

We consider that the most valuable tool was our work, because the project combines authentic language learning with the humanitarian concept of cultural understanding. This way is a unique learning process, which encourages strong links between the virtual and real classrooms. The project encouraged us to find creative ways of our expressing as uniqueness as individuals in a classroom, as a classroom in a school and a school within a cultural community. We were stimulated to express our respect, affection and love to our family, teachers and friends. We were also encouraged to actively contribute to project rather than passively the net. The focus was to develop quality works culminating in virtual site.

3) In what ways did you act as "ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair project both on-line and in person.

Our community represented by parents, teachers, friends and others has been our main support during the project stages. Most of them didn't never visit a web page or they didn't know how looks it as a electronic publication.

We organized a meeting in our school with all of them, where we presented our work, opening the web page from our computer, before it will be posted on the web. They all were very impressed by the new technology, pictures, artwork and songs. We were very impressed especially by our grandparents, they were really happy to see our work on the computer.

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

The technology of information is a very powerful tool of teaching. We learnt that our goals in life are to be open for new ideas, coming from the school, families or friends. But more important is to find strategies to support them. The power of the Internet is in its human connective potential. By connecting us as global citizens and local community members, we learn better. We believe in this philosophy and believe children and community can make a difference in the world.

Through this project we had the opportunity to prepare for adult life through meaningful collaborative interaction with any member of our community. We are sure that the learning will be enhanced and retained when it is gained through experiential interaction with real people, learning together on a reciprocal basis. The Information Technology is the new way for teaching in the new millennium, according to the teaching and educational reform in the world.

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

This project is the result of our work during 5 months, November 1999- March 2000. 127 students and 10 teachers were directly involved, but we would like to recognize the many people whose contributions have helped to make this project: teachers, parents, grandparents, friends and other community members. We all thank you!

Special Thanks to: Irina Chirita, Constanţa Nedelcu, Dan Roşioru, Dorin Antonache, Fănel Lipan, George Hrubaru, Georgeta Dan, Ion Bobia, Monica Antonache, Monica Chiriţă, Rafael Badia, Stela Sebe, Tiberiu Dima, and Zoica Dumitru.