Project Narrative
**** Better Life ... Piece of Cake ****
Information | Project Overview | Project Elements
We see the whole World as our community. Our goal is to overcome the differences with love and understanding. Although it may look like a utopian vision and somewhat unreal, we don't care since we don't see no other alternative.
Our school is located in south-east Slovenia, close tothe border with Croatia and it has 800 students (grades 9 to 13). There are more than a hundred castles in Slovenia, and one of the best preserved and arranged is in Brezice. It contains the longest secular Baroque painted space in Slovenia – the knights’ hall and contains the Posavje museum, which presents the history of places along the Sava. Settlements grew beside the castle, and were given the name “civitas Rein”, meaning town on the banks of the river. The water tower is a protected monument. Together with the castle it is considered Brezice's landmark. Even through the complex of Terme Catez some three kilometres south-east of Brezice attracts those suffering from aches and pains, it is as much a recreational area – and one of the friendliest in Slovenia. Mokrice Castle, about 10 kilometres from Brezice, is the loveliest in the Posavje region and has been completely renovated and turned into a 30-room luxury hotel. With one of Slovenia’s few 18-hole golf courses, a large stable with horses for rent and a 20-hectare “English park” full of pear trees and rare plants, it makes a delightful excursion from Brezice. Brezice is situated in a basin just north of where the Krka flows into the river Sava. It lies in a charming area of gently rolling hills, vineyards, presses and the Sava River flowing into Croatia.
3. Summary of Our Project
This in an initiative to make a difference. Here you may find results of our research on the most disturbing things mankind possesses as well as the solutions how to solve them. Feel free to check what other people think about it and let us know if you have any idea of your own. Thank you for sharing your experience with us!
4. Our Internet Access
In Slovenia there is ARNES, an institution, sponsored by 'Open Society' and Ministry For Science and Development, which provides free Internet access for all students and their teachers. However, the problem is with hardware which is too costly for most students and their parents. We have an ISDN/56 KB access. There were no sponsoring organisations.
5. Problems We Had To Overcome
A major problem appeared to be translating all material into the English language. As a matter of fact, it doubled our publishing efforts. Individual Internet access was another problem to overcome: just a few of us have it. And finally, there was the time problem. Everybody was just overloaded with all kinds of work, studying and homework. The server where we put our sites didn't suport CGI for data collection through interactive web-sites.
6. Our Project Sound Bite
We were the only participating school from our country in the competition. In a way we represented Slovenia, so we felt somewhat responsible for its image as well. We did our best to represent ourselves and our community. Our team also hope and believe, that our contribution will have some impact on our troubled World, promoting values like love and understanding which could improve the quality of our common life.
This section explains the project elements found in the CyberFair Project Assignment
1. How did our activities and research for this International School CyberFair 97 support our required coursework and curriculum requirements?
The project is very interdisciplinary. Subjects were crosslinked with next curriculum requirements :
Participating in International projects is planned to be a part of coursework in higher grades in secondary schools. We are new in that kind of information interchange. In many ways it was an ice-breaking activity. As a result we demonstrated the ussage of ICT in On-Line learning at an international annual conference in our country (MIRK, Piran).
2. What information tools and technologies did you use to complete your CyberFair project?
Several tools had been used to obtain feedback information. For distributing the survey we used different resources like E-mail, personal contacts, a local radio station, oral interviews and Internet Real-Time Chat. A Windows based computer had been used to write, illustrate and publish the web sites. Other tools were:
To get as many answers as possible we used several Internet conferences and other global school-networks such as I*EARN and EU School Net.
3. In what ways did you act as
"ambassadors" and spokespersons for your CyberFair project both on-line and in
person.
Since we were the only participating school from Slovenia, we believe that throughout our
project many people became aware of us, our school and our country. We also believe
that our common universal Values are misused in many ways and our contribution is at least
a little step towards a Better Place To Live In for all of us.
4. What has been the impact of your
project on your community?
The most important impact of our project, not just on our community, was that people
became aware that our common Values are in danger. Another big impact was that we all
became aware that Internet brought us the abilitty to exchange information with our
fellowmen all over the world, without borders and censors. Freedom came closer and within
reach more then ever.
We believe that as we share our Friendship, we create the possibility for all people, everywhere, as well as the planet and its environment to join together in a positive and healing way. Taking this stand will create a positive ripple effect in the world, like a stone dropping into a pond, that will help to reduce the negativity and suffering on our planet and create new possibilities for people and the planet.
5. How did your project involve other
members of our community as helpers and volunteers?
We involved other members all over the world by asking them to answer the questionnaire on
Values. We also involved members from our community who helped us with translations,
comments, discussions, advice and so forth. A local TV station spread our voice even
wider. Special thanks to:
A pleasant discovery was that some 70 % of all people
responded to our survey. Many of them even took time to sent a comment on the issue.
Indifference turned to be most disturbing thing mankind possesses
around the World. Violence was most disturbing thing within our country.
We also discovered that students were more than eager to participate, while their
elder were not. They were too busy, of course. We also learned much about organizing such
projects for the future.