Our Project
Bibliography

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.

 


Copyright @ Tubote Team, Westland School, Gansu Province, China 2007