Announcing the members of the team!!! 

• Zhi Rong --- Leader/Researcher (HCI Singapore)
• Wei Xiang --- Web Designer (HCI Singapore)
• Cheng Jie --- Researcher (HCI Singapore)
• Shaun--- Researcher (HCI Singapore)
• Joseph --- Researcher/Interviewer (HCI Singapore)  
  

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- Reasons for choosing this topic

- Difficulties faced

- Team diversity and collaboration

- Timeline

- Reflections

Reasons behind why we chose this topic: 

First and foremost, we agreed on this topic because it has a global awareness, and not only that, it also helps to raise the awareness of the current issues affecting the Earth, such as global warming or the climate change problem. This would certainly help in raising the awareness of the people around us, or at least we hoped so. Anyway, Earth is facing many problems right now; we must do something in order to prevent this from worsening any further. What we are doing now is only the bare minimal, but through this project, many people will know about the negative effects; they will spread the message, and soon many more will know. Thus, this is the reason why we chose this project; and that is to spread the awareness to other people, to save the earth before it is too late! 

Difficulties faced when doing this project: 

Naturally, when doing any projects, problems would be faced. This project is no exception. Problems including the copyright issue, the distribution of work problem, etc. However, we shall be elaborating on one difficulty that affected the team a lot.  

The problem was that one of our members, Cheng Jie appeared to be not doing his work, when everybody handed up their work, he didn’t. This continued for some time. Gradually, we suspected he was not oding his work, and we confronted him. He was indeed doing so. Soon, an internal conflict within the team happened. Some wanted Cheng Jie out of the team; some wanted to give him a second chance. After countless arguments, we finally met face-to-face, and came up with a solution. He was to do more work. That was how the conflict was solved, but at a great price. We lost a lot of time then; we learnt from this conflict that we should cooperate more, and that we should encourage our teammates more often to prevent them from slacking.  

This was the major conflict that we had when doing the project. Of course, there are other issues, like the difficulty we had doing the ThinkQuest because we were new to this project; it was our first time doing this. We learnt a great deal from doing this ThinkQuest project. In the end, we cooperated more, we became better friends and better teammates; it was indeed an enriching experience. 

Team diversity and collaboration

Team Diversity: 

Although all of our team members are Singaporeans, we all had different work style. Some of us took the job seriously; some preferred to slack a bit. Of course, we had to compromise sometimes due to the fact that some members took the project too lightly. This however, helped us a lot. When some of us took the project “too seriously”, those “slack” members helped us reduce stress by making the whole team relax a bit. As for Zhi Rong, Shaun, Joseph, and Wei Xiang, they were usually the work-oriented ones, while Cheng Jie was usually the light-spirited one, making us less stressed when things were getting hard, like the time when the research deadline was approaching, everyone was very stressed up and the atmosphere was a bit tense, but Cheng Jie managed to lighten everyone’s mood up. He also managed to “brighten” the website too. Some of us worked slowly, while others worked very fast. That’s the reason why we had to compromise. In the end, the results were still the same, work on the website was in progress. 

However, Cheng Jie took things a bit too lightly for a while. It was his personality, end up we had a very big conflict that almost broke the team up. Different personalities caused this conflict, Joseph and Zhi Rong was too work-oriented while Cheng Jie took things too lightly. Anyway, Cheng Jie managed to turn over a new leaf and the team was back on track. This conflict made our group even stronger and everyone was willing to work even harder for the team. 

Cheng Jie is also more familiar with what has been happening in China and the issues she is facing as he was born there (Despite being a Singaporean). Thus, he is also able to provide us with information regarding the environmental problems of China (How it deals with global Warming etc.) 

That’s how the team diversity managed to help us in our project. 

Team Collaboration / Timeline: 

22nd October – 2nd November 2007

We assign jobs by looking at each of our members’ strengths. Wei Xiang and Cheng Jie became the website designer as they were best at the IT aspect. Zhi Rong, Joseph and Shaun went to research as they were familiar with this topic. 

3rd – 16th November 2007

Progress was quite slow for the next 2 weeks. But we managed to start our research and begin on the sitemap. Progress was slow were due to the lack of cooperation.  

17th –30th November 2007

During the next 2 weeks, research was going on steadily, some of us visited recycling day 2007. Cooperation was better now, after working together for a while. If 1 had a difficulty, each will try to help. 

1st -14 December 2007

This period of time was the research phase of the project. However, research was rather slow due to personal and school affairs. Yet, we try our best to catch up and help each other. 

15th -28th December 2007

We followed Mr. Sng’s advice on how to improve the website. Joseph was in charge of interview, while Shaun and Cheng Jie were in charge of survey.  

29th December – 11th January 2008

Research almost done! Everyone is putting much effort. 

12th -25th Jan 2008

There has been little conflict between the 5 members. A new website has been made that is better than the previous one. Meanwhile, interviews and survey was going smooth  

26h January-8th February 2008

Almost all research topics have been finalized, survey is half done; interview questions sent and have been replied.  

It appears that one of our members, Cheng Jie was “slacking”. A conflict occurred. This lasted for quite a while.  

9th-22nd February

Survey has been officially declared done, interviews are finishing too. Games and lesson plans were started on. Website has been improved. 

For the conflict, it had lasted for about 2 weeks, intense argument happened. Finally, we met face-to-face. Everyone in the team, including Mr. Sng was there. Finally, we came up with one solution to the problem that everybody compromised on. Cheng Jie had to do more work from now on. After the conflict was solved, everything was back to normal. This conflict made our team even stronger. 

23rd February – 8th March

Interviews and Lesson packages have been submitted for editing. Everyone was doing what they were supposed to. The final deadline requested by our coach on 24 March was approaching. 

9th -24th March

Almost all sections done. Now, we are focusing on the website now. The whole project had to be completed by 24 March. We were working at our “max” to meet the deadline.

From this project, we leant more about teamwork and how to work together peacefully.  

We divided the jobs and the roles according to our strengths, Wei Xiang was good in IT, so he went to do the website, Zhi Rong had leadership qualities, so we nominated him to be the team leader, Joseph had good PR(Public Relation) Skills, so he went to interview, etc. Throughout the whole project, we would help one another, even though his work did not come under our section. Teamwork was very important. Together, we assigned the jobs, helped each other in times of need, and managed to pull through some hard times. Right now, we finished the project, we all felt happy and relieved because we had a burden off our backs, but we learnt a lot of things too as we worked together as one team. Teamwork, cooperation, helpfulness, etc, we all learnt this. Thus, we considered this project a success and we will always be proud of our completed work, and the fact that we did our best. 

Reflections of the Team: 

Zhi Rong

To be honest, this journey had been a very fruitful and meaningful one. We learnt a lot of things, such as citation, researching and many more that cannot be put on paper. There had been arguments, but we solve this peacefully. There had been many times too, when we met with difficulties, but, we still did not give up. "What does not kill us make us stronger." For us, this is true. We spent our December holidays and school days researching for this project and watch enviously as other enjoy their holidays and we spent our holidays doing our project. Although there had been many times where we had too many stuffs and are is unable to sort out our commitments, we still manage to pass trough this difficult times.  

Wei Xiang

The entire learning process was actually a rewarding experience. When we first commenced on this project, I was a little unsure of myself as I really don't think I'm up to the task of web designing. However, after months, I managed to complete my task. From this entire process, I of course have developed skills in web design and learnt about the predicament our planet is in. I have also learnt to manage my time more efficiently as I was also busy with other activities in school at the same time. Through this process, I've enjoyed myself very much and though we may argue about some things at times, we still managed to resolve the issues and pulled through. 
 

Joseph

The whole project was actually quite fun. It certainly gave me a lot of experience in terms of research and citations and copyright issues. It also taught me to work better as a team, though at times there were some conflicts between each member, we still worked cooperatively at the end. It certainly raised my awareness on some issues that has been affecting the Earth, and that we should do our best to save it. This experience was indeed a fun and enriching one. 

Shaun

Thinkquest was fun and exciting. I learnt the importance of teamwork and also to appreciate the work done by others. Though there were many dissatisactions, we still managed to finish the project. In conclusion, we have worked hard and we hope to succeed in this competition.  

Chengjie

For the last few months, I have been involving in this unforgettable think quest competition. It was really an exciting learning experience for me. Through this journey, I learnt lots about being responsible and to put in my effort. The most important thing I learnt is that to be a successful team, lots of teamwork is needed. I also learnt tons of new facts while I was researching.  
 

2008 Save the Earth Team wishes to thank our mentor, any teachers and organisations that helped us in this project.