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Small Projects 2015~2016

On-Going

November 30, 2015: Finalized project plans were received, reviewed, and listed below to track progress.

November 5, 2015: Congratulations! We have reviewed and approved 39 small projects from 14 libraries for support and funding.

September 20, 2015: We have received 67 small project proposals from 17 libraries

July 15, 2015: Acceptance window was opened to accept small project application for 2015~2016

Reading & Language Study

• Chinese Reading      Fang Chen      Guizhou Kaili No.1 High School

To address the situation of students’ limited reading and experience, poor oral and written communication skills, and insufficient Chinese language capability, design activities of reading, writing, lecture and performance under the topic of Elissey Frome’s “Love between parents and children”. On top of the activities, guide students to write their own growth/family stories based on their own experience, and transfer the stories into stage performance, so to improve their capabilities including Chinese language.

• Fun English Learning       Shijuan Qian       Guizhou Kaili No.1 High School

Introduce a fun way for students to learn English: Collect interesting English slang, idioms, phrases, humors, jokes, famous drama dialogues, and classical songs, in written form or using soundtracks of movies, TV dramas, or musics to stimulate students’ interest in English learning, help them to learn native American pronounciation and study western culture, and improve their capability of English communication through practice.

Art Education

• Small Town Big Calligraphy        Runxuan Ding          Gansu Tongwei No.1 Middle School

Tongwei County, with more than 3000 painters, has been named as China’s town of arts by Cultural Ministry. Most of the painters were born in 1960s, some in 1970s, and even fewer in 1980s and 1990s, thus the painting arts are declining in danger. This project organizes students to collect the works of local artists of older generations, interview the artists for their cognitive interpretation of calligraphy, read relative books, and apply what learned into their calligraphy learning and practicing. The calligraphy works of the two generations, their interpretation, and communication will be collected and demonstrated as the product of the project. The project should be able to strengthen the students’ understanding and interest in calligraphy, improve their skills, and promote the inheritation of this art form.

Health Education

• Sexuality Education in High School          Hong Li             Gansu Tianzhu No.1 High School

Our school, located in rural minority area, is underdeveloped in economy, culture, education and so on, where it is difficult for the schools, families, and society to give effective sexuality education and guidance to local high school students, while the students have pressing demand in this aspect. This project pilots the experiment of sexuality education in the school. Using pilot sexuality education via main-stream films teaching plans, collecting and borrowing lectures from middle/high school teaching case database, teachers will guide students to watch the films and organize discussions. The project will be based on holistic sexuality education(HSE)/empowerment sexuality education concept framework.

Oral History and Local Culture Study

• School Oral History, Phase II              Qingjun Jin             Shaanxi Danfeng High School

This is Phase II of the project “Danfeng High School oral history” started in 2013. The materials of school history in the school library are mainly in the form of texts and pictures, such as School Record and County Education Record. Very limited information can be found in these materials regarding the details of some historical events, the school’s experience under special historical periods, and the changes of some of the school’s relics and buildings. Taking the way of oral history, students interview persons who witnessed the foundation of the school, or the teacher/student representatives from different ages who witnessed important historical events of the school. Richer, fuller and more comprehensive school history information will be collected. Based on the experience drawn from Phase I of the project, more oral history experience will be accumulated, students’ historical literacy, interview skills, multi-media application skills will get improved.

• ChuanBang Ship Culture Hall: Current Situation & Heritage Suggestion         Chuan Qin          Shaanxi Danfeng High School

Chuanbang Ship Culture Hall in Longju Village, Danfeng County, Shaanxi Province is a famous dock cultural building. During the study of Danfeng Ship Culture History and Development started in 2014, we found that the preservation of the Hall building has many problems: historical relics such as brick statue, wood statue, stone statue, wall pictures were all damaged to some extent. Thus we proposed this new study: explore the current status of Chuanbang Ship Culture Hall, and search for proper preservation and protection methods. Through the project, students are expected to expand their knowledge in ship culture and historical relics, build up their hands-on experience in practical works, and cultivate their citizenship literacy through community services.

• Danfeng Folk Story Collection          Longjiang Liu             Shaanxi Danfeng High School

Shaanxi Danfeng county, Guanzhong’s key to connect Shanxi province in the north and connect Zhejiang and Hunan in the south, is rich of folk stories. Teachers will guide students to read theories of folk stories and examples, collect local folk story resources, such as folk stories of local immigrants, local women’s customs, and rewrite the stories. Through participation in the searching, collection and sorting up of folk stories, the project aimed at nurturing the students with folk literature, enhancing their research capabilities, and deepening their emotional connection to the community and the local culture.

• Inquiry of Miao’s Youfang Culture in Southeast Guizhou          Wencai Jin        Guizhou Kaili No.1 High School

Southeast Guizhou Province is an area of concentrated minorities, with obvious folk culture characteristics. Youfang or visiting, is the main social form of young people of Miao tribe. Usually, guys and girls get to know each other through this channel, make friends and maybe eventually get married. Teachers will lead students to perform the oral history interview of the Youfang topic, and demonstrate their result school-wide. The project will help students to learn and recognize the unique cultural cannotation of Youfang, and enhance their capabilities in field work and research. As a school of minority people, this project will help teachers and students deepen their understanding of the local folk culture, and inherit and promote it.

• Family Oral History         Yongli Lu         Guizhou Kaili No.1 High School

This is the Phase II of oral history project: Under the guidance of the teachers, students will interview older generations in their families, recording their life experience and inspect these life stories in historical background, and write non-fiction analytical articles. Learned from Phase I, we will operate the project in the interview and the writing stages. At the interview stage, pay attention to guide students to dig details and emotional feelings, and collect as rich historical material as possible; and at the writing stage, systematically and carefully guide students to carry out non-fiction writing of their family stories.

• Farming Folk Dance: Dong’s Goulin Folk Culture in Lantian of Tianzhu County       Qiongyan Yuan      Guizhou Kaili No.1 High School

"Goulin", also called GouLian, is said to have a history of over 400 years. It is a special sports event in a united form of marshal art and dance, formed from local people's daily life and farming work, and popular in Dong tribe villages of Lantian Town of Tianzhu County. With the intencified modernization process of the local community, Lantian's Goulin was severely impacted, no inheritance, and engangered. In this project, teachers lead students to carry out oral history interviews with Lantian's Goulin as the theme, so to deepen students' understanding of this traditional folk culture, cultivate their recognition and love to the culture, as well as contribute to the inheritance and protection of the cultural heritage.

• Inquiry of Gong Daguan Ceremony       Jiangyin Xu          Yunnan Shidian No.2 Middle School

The custom of "Gong Daguan" in Shidian is to memorize the famous Ming Dynasty Captain, Zilong Deng. Deng Zilong once commanded many campaigns of defence in the Yunnan Border area during the In 12 years since Wanli Year Eleven, he commanded many battles against Myanmar invasion, and successfully defended the Yunnan Border. In memory of Guo Zilong’s great achievement, the local people went to "Daguan", the site where Captain Deng defended the Myanmar invaders, to celebrate, and gradually the celebration event formed into a custom. Lacking of historical record, there is no complete documentation of this event custom. In this project, teachers lead students to research, interview, and collect the information of the custom, to build up more comprehensive understanding of its historical background, and its influence on the current people. This process will help students to build up research capability, deepen their recognition of hometown historical culture, thus consciously participate into the action of the hometown cultural heritage.

• Inheritance and Development of Jinbulang Hit Song         Lufei Yang        Yunnan Shidian No.2 Middle School

Jinbulang is a special tribe in Shidian County. The tribe has no written language, but has a very rich oral culture, still retains the most distinctive tribal languages, dresses, songs and dances, and custom habits. Hit song is one of the representatives of their unique tribal culture. The teachers of Chinese language, music, video technician will invite some Jinbulang students and Jinbulang people who are good at speaking Chinese to lead the research team into Junbulang community Bailang town and Muyuanlang town. The team will film and photograph the original Hit Song, collect and record the music, lyrics and postures, interview the people who are familiar with the Hit Song culture, and get familiar with the history and current status of this culture. The team will write a research report, share their work product with other students, learn and perform Hit Song. The process will help students to know better of Jinbulang Hit Song, to learn, recognize, love and inherite this local culture.

• Shidian Lantern Opera        Yong Zhao         Yunnan Shidian No.2 Middle School

Taking advantage of his own family of origin Lantern Opera, the lead teacher invites teachers of Chinese language, music, and IT, guide students to interview the folk Lantern Opera artists and local academicians, study the cultural connotation, understand the inheritance situation, and record the folk Lantern Opera performance. The project will help students recognize and understand the local culture represented by Lantern Opera, develop their interests, and in turn participate into the cultural heritage.

• Into Folk Cultural Resource: Huarui Tabetan Folktale Collection       Xinlan Wu         Gansu Tianzhu Xinhua Middle School

Tianzhu is the center of Huarui Tabetan areas, the northwest bordering frontier city in ancient time, a key route of the ancient Silk Road, and the convergence zone of multiple tribes. There had been rich Tibetan folklore inherited orally from generation to generation. But in recent years, impacted by modernization, the folktales have been seldom known to the young generations and in urgent need to be collected and protected. Teachers and students, guided by the local folk culture scholars, record the folktales narrated by the elder people and other people in the form of video, photo and paper documentation, and retrospect the origin of these stories. The product of the project, including teachers' thesis, record of activity process and collected folktales, will be shared with all the school faculty and students. In the process, students will be taken closer to the local folk culture and discover the charms of the folktales. They will also enhance interview and multi-media skills.

• Research of Tianzhu Tibetan Buddhism       Zhaxiji        Gansu Tianzhu Xinhua Middle School

Huarui Tibetan Zone, an important part of Anduo Tibetan area, is an auspitious holy land of Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism has a long development history in Tianzhu County. It has played a very important role in Tibetan cultural heritage and Tibetan talents cultivation. The history of Tibetan Buddhism temples is an impartial integral part of Tianzhu local history. Teachers and students started with inquiry of the history of representative Tianzhu Tibetan Buddhism temples, Tiantang Temple, Shimen Temple, and Zhugong Temple, to investigate the current status of the temples, interview the insiders for the ups and downs of the Tianzhu Buddhism temples as well as the experience of related people, and learn the root of their own folk culture.

• Engangered Huarui Tibetan Language         Facheng Lei           Gansu Tianzhu No.1 High School

Tianzhu, pronounced Huarui in Tibetan language, means a hero tribe. Huarui is a Tibetan branch mainly resident in Gansu Tianzhu County. Huarui Tibetan has a long history of its unique habit of life, food, religion, marriage, and dress, which has been inherited orally from generation to generation. Impacted by civilization development, Tianzhu's Tibetan language and customs are gradually forgotten and lost, seriously influenced by Han culture. Many Tibetan students are not able to speak Tibetan language. In this project, teachers guide students who can speak Tibetan language to interview Tibetan old people and singing artists around them, record the vivid expressions in the Huarui Tibetan language, and build up Huarui Tibetan language datacenter. A reading material will also be edited to share with other faculties and students, to trigger the interest of learning their own Tibetan language.

• Family Tradition Oral History         Guofu Tian         Gansu Tongwei No.1 High School

Families are small units of society, which sustain the development of society. Family tradition is family culture or morality, such as behavioral principles or life attitude, which everyone grows up in and is comprehensively impacted. It could be presented as a story experienced by the family ancestors, a heirloom, or some most influential words from elders. Students will be guided by teachers to interview their family members, record stories and memories of their family tradition, and write corresponding essays. The project will help students to dig out and digest their family culture, and be nourished and grow from it.

• Family Education of Past Generations       Li Sun         Shaanxi Yaoshan High School

Whatever family education would be bounded by the era. Ten years ago or even earlier, when education was less advanced and society was less affluent, how was family education accepted and conducted? Dig up our own family education stories, interview parents and grandparents for their family education history, understand the family education they received, and analyze relationship to the era background, is the way to inherit family education. Teachers will lead students to work on the project. We also hope this process will cultivate students’ research capability in historical topics.

Inquiry-based Learning

• Research of Huai’an Grand Canal Culture        Di Li          Jiangsu Huai'an No. 1 Middle School

Huai'an, located on the southern side of ancient Huaihe River, the junction of Huanghe River, Huaihe River and Jinghang Grand Canal, was a great transportation artery to maintain the country's canal transportation during Ming and Qing Dynasties. To eliminate the detriment of the sediment in Huanghe River, from Ming to Qing dynasties, with huai’an as the center, a comprehensive harnessing of the three rivers was lasted for hundreds of years. The Qingkou Grand Canal Hub project built during Wanli Period of Ming Dynasty was the achievement of the harnessing, but it fianlly failed during Jiaqing Period of Qing Dynasty. What is the historical position of Huai'an Great Canal? What was the strategy taken by the Qingkou hydro-junction to harness the sediment? How was the practical effect? Why did it fail? Teachers will lead students to research documentations, field trip investigate, and interview insiders to search for answers to these questions.

• Research and Protection of Biodiversity in Leigong Mountain National Reserved Area        Liangui Tan           Guizhou Kaili No.1 High School

Miaoling Mountain in the southeast Guizhou Province is the ancient habitat of Miao and Dong tribes, with high quality water, thick forest and rich plant resources. However, due to lacking of environmental awareness and inadequate factories constructed, many habitats are disappearing, eutrophication and environmental pollution are happening in the area. This project is going to inquiry the biodiversity and protection of Leigong Mountain National Natural Reserved Area. The research group has 6 teachers who will investigate of the protection area and design the environment education plan. The team will recruit 8-10 students and volunteers to participate in 3 Leigong Mountain environment education activities; to give natural science lectures in 2 elementary schools and 1 middle school. The lecture topics include biodiversity, ancient biology fossil, and environment pollution. Through this project, we hope to promote the biodiversity recognition of students and local communities, and trigger their awareness of environment protection and development.

• Campus Garbage Classification         Guodong Li           Guizhou Wende Middle School

Campus garbage disposal directly impacts the interest of teachers and students, and also impacts the environment around. Our school has a big population but lacks of knowledge and adequate treatment conditions of garbage disposal. Campus garbage are simply dumped or burned, and caused serious environmental pollution. In this project, teachers and students will investigate the details of campus garbage, the disposal methods, the impact of generated waste water, waste gas and waste sediment on teachers, students, environment and surrounding residences, as well as the opinion and viewpoint of the school management. With the support of the environmental department, inquire the possible improvement via garbage classification and other methods, construct feasible garbage disposal proposals and submit to the school managers. Through the practical process, cultivate the students' ability of inquiry learning, problem discovering and solving, and the sense of community serving.

Community Education Service

• Online Banking e-Life        Huifang Liu         Gansu Tongwei County Public Library

Accompanied with IT technology, online banking, online shopping, and online financing have become indispensible knowledge and skills in our daily life. Community elder people, especially those in rural area, are not able to enjoy the convenience of online banking due to their limited literacy level. This project focuses on the training of these elder people online banking knowledge and skills to facilitate their lives, and improve their information literacy.

• Children Calligraphy Training         Ying Wang           Gansu Tongwei County Public Library

Tongwei County, with a long history of advocating the Farming and Reading Culture and inherited calligraphy and painting arts, is known nationwide as "County of Chinese Calligraphy" or "Land with Calligraphy Fragrance". It is the wish of many parents that their children could learn calligraphy since young. Thus we are going to launch Children Calligraphy Training, teach them calligraphy knowledge and handwriting skills, train their patience and self-confidence, and develop dedicated study habit.

• Idiom Story Forum for Children         Lixia Wei             Gansu Tongwei County Public Library

Idioms are an essential part of the long Chinese history and culture. It is catchy, rich of content, and profound. The stories behind idioms are concise, vivid, humorous and ethical, rich of knowledge and wisdom. How to guide children to get interested familiar the idioms? No doubt that telling idiom stories is the best way. Thus our library will host idiom story-telling forum for children during weekend and holiday time, lead children to enjoy idiom stories and gain knowledge. Meanwhile, the forum will train children for expression and enrich their after-class life.

• Children Education of Immigrant Families      Jun Chen        New Resident Children Center

New Resident Children Center is a NGO of Haidian District in Beijing. It dedicated to provide educational services to 0-6 years old children and their parents of new resident, or Migrant Workers. In 2011, we found through an investigation of two communities covered by our service that, the immigrant worker families didn't pay much attention to habits education, emotional and life education; they were lack of pre-school education and family education guidance, and the sense of community; and they had many other issues. This project focuses on habit, emotion and life education, support and help pre-school education of Migrant Worker families in four ways: 1. Parent-child picture book reading: Children's habits, emotion and life education; 2. Traditional text book reading: Learn excellent parenting philosophy from traditional culture; 3.Family education workshop: According to the actual problems encountered or parental hotspot discussion, co-read traditional and modern parenting documentations, invite experts, volunteers and parents to discuss and brainstorm education methods; 4. Parents mutual-support platform: A platform for parents’s daily communication to help each other with parenting and family education.

• Reading Salon for Females in Floating Population Community     Yi Wang       New Century Dream Library

Floating population community in a city is a marginalized groups, in addition to the relatively high living cost, these people are mentally more stressful. With the limited education they received and under the poor family financial condition, female adults(the mothers) in a floating population community have to work and earn money, manage the family, and support their husbands and children. They are facing many problems and bearing various pressures from spiritual needs、reproductive health care、marriage and family、children education, psychological counseling and many other aspects. A platform or infrastructure to serve them is in urgent need. Our library uses its own facilities and resources to host a women's reading Salon (Growth Station), to improve their life quality by providing various services carried out via reading. The planned activities include such as theme readings, marriage and family trainings, reproductive health care trainings, family education lectures, psychological counseling, career guidance and planning, family nutrition and cooking.

• Xin Mu Library Reading Club         Xiaojue Zheng          Xin Mu Librabry

Xin Mu library publically recruits "reading recording volunteers" to record "stereo" audio books for our visually impaired friends. The library shares these audio books with visually impared friends via publishing to WeChat/internet, or directly sending in form of SD card or CD-ROM to them. This project aims to build a communicating platform for the reading volunteers and the visually impaired people, so that they can have good interaction and regular face-to-face meetings to exchange their reading or listening experience and feelings. And it will also promote our visually impaired audio book service program.

Science in the Library & Makerspace

• Water Level Alarm and Water Quality Monitoring Model, Phase II         Liu Ping         Shaanxi Danfeng High school

During the implementation of Phase I of project Water Quality Monitoring in 2014, we found that the difficulty was beyond our estimation of water quality testing module. Thus we decided to simplify the water quality testing module into a liquid turbidity detection. In Phase II, we will build reservoir sand table model to carry out encapsulation debugging of the water level testing module and the water quality turbidity detection module, add the automatic cut-off switch module and the LED display module, perform system testing, and attempt to apply this detection device into real life.

• Wind Energy Utilization Demonstration       Yuan Peng                   ShaanXi Danfeng High School

• Solar Energy Utilization Demonstration        Jiangjiang Zhang       ShaanXi Danfeng High School

Nowadays, people are continuously trying to use new energy for human production and construction. Young people's awareness of new energy and application ability will have a far-reaching impact. These two projects are going to to set up and demonstrate the new energy systems, to show students the process of the generation and application of new energy. A series of activities are also planned to give students hands-on opportunities to have a deeper understanding of new energy, and stimulate their desire to study the new energy.

• Classroom Air Quality Inspection          Qingpo Zhou         Shaanxi Danfeng High School

Under the guidance of teachers, students learn Arduino language, and apply it to solve a practical problem: Classroom air quality inspection. Obtain the present air quality in the classroom through data analysis, and put forward suggestions to improve it. This process will let students experience the process and methods of problem solving, enhance their ability of problem identification, and applying technology and knowledge to solve the problems.

• Intelligent Light Control         Penghui Wang          Shannxi Danfeng High School

Currently, Artificial Intelligence is getting closer and closer to our daily life. How to implement AI? How does a mobile phone control a machine? How do they communicate with each other? This is a great temptation to high school students. It's easy for them to have strong desire of making their own AI. This project is related to home intelligence using mobile phone APP. By programming the phone to control different light colors in the home, develop students' hands-on ability and interest in new technology, and increase their self-confidence.

• Intelligent Car         Shiyan Yan         Jiangsu Huai'an No.1 Middle School

Recruit high school students who are interested in science and technology and innovation to set up a research group, to develop Intelligent Car using Arduino. Through this project, I hope the students can get familiar with Arduino programming, design and finish a simple and complete Arduino programming task on their own, and lay down a good foundation for more complicated software and system design in the future.

• Auduino Advertising Lanterns         Yidan Hu           Guizhou Kaili No.1 High School

Our school locates in a relatively backward minority rural place, people here have little knowledge of science and technology, children who love science and technology have no chances to practice. Some students asked teachers whether they could continue learning programming, some students asked teachers questions about computer control. In this project, students learn Arduino and make Arduino creative works. They will learn autonomous learning using books and internet, practice cooperative teamwork in the process of product making. Their hands-on ability will get enhanced, their willpower will be polished during repeated failures, and finally they will experience the happy of success. The experience will inspire them to work for making their dream of science and technology come true.

• Arduino Intelligent Farming Shed         Yuhong Wang          Gansu Tianzhu No.1 High School

Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County is a Minority Autonomous County major in facility agriculture and characteristic cultivation. To help local people to increase their greenhouse income, we use Arduino to develop intelligent farming shed, that can be used to control the greenhouse temperature, provide more suitable environment for crops and livestock to grow, and increase the yield and the product quality. Through the project, we hope to open the door for students to understand the concept and working mode of intelligent robot. While learning to program for intelligent control, they also get the training of scientific thinking, and get improved in the ability of logical thinking, planning, analyzing and problem solving. Their communication skills, collaboration and creativity will also get developed in this hands-on process.

• Arduino Intelligent Vehicle          Shuanyun He          Shaanxi Yaoshan High School

Over the years, Yaoshan High School organized a lot of activities but mainly in theme of arts. To fulfill the desire of students who are science and technology fans, we implemented the Arduino Intelligent Vehicle project. The project will bring science and tech closer to students, help stimulating students' interest in SCI, and provide more learning and practicing opportunities to students interested in science and technology.

• Date & Time Multi-function Demo         Junfeng Li         Shaanxi Yaoshan High School

In Geography teached in middle and high school, students have difficulty to understand the date and time knowledge, such as the difference of the two kinds of datelines. Teachers and students are eager to explore effective ways to assist learning. This project is to design "The Date & Time multi-function Demo" as an assistant teaching tool, It has an intuitive three-dimensional dynamic change, can be used to help students understand changes in the time and date of Geography. The team members will need to research, prototype, and demonstrate and promote the result and experience.The experience will benefit the project team members with information literacy practicing, design and making, teamwork and coorporation, and presentation ability。The project instructor will also accumulate means and experiences of guiding students through such project based exploration and research.

• Remote Control Aircraft       Minke Pan        Shaanxi Yaoshan High School

This project helps to stimulate and cultivate teachers and students' interest in science and technology, such as aeromodelling. The project will make team members experience the joy of creation, satisfy their desire in learning, mastering and exploration the knowledge of related science and technology, and build up their awareness and confidence in learning and applying technology knowledges.

Infrastructure and Capacity Building

• Thematic Pilot Book Corner: Construction of Social Workers Book Corner     Kun Chang      Aibo Center

Professional learning is closely related to the work of Non-profit organizations, and professional practice requires the continuous accumulation of professional knowledge, both theory learning and experience communicating are necessary. Without social work professional learning，volunteers are lack of social work awareness, and not able to well apply the social work phylosophy and methods, such as 7 principles of social work, or 6 steps to help, in their social work services and practices. The social workers book corner provides the learning opportunities and conditions to volunteers. In 2015 Beijing Grassroot Library Forum, we had learned an important experience to work by way of book corner and thematic book corner/library. Thus we are setting up a social worker book corner at Fuyang Yimin social work service center. The cornor will guide social workers and volunteers for independent professional learning, so to enhance their professional awareness and skill, and improve the quality of professional services they provided.

Evergreen Education Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit charity registered in California, United States. Registration number 68-0474814.