E-mail : d2205009@ccms.ntu.edu.tw
Homepage : http://cc.ntu.edu.tw/~d2205009/
Chen Shu-Hwa, Institute of Zoology, National Taiwan University
E-mail : d3205001@cc.ntu.edu.tw
Homepage : http://cc.ntu.edu.tw/~d3205001/hi.htm
In the beginning of 1995, we started to collect some information on the web and to organize our experiences such as setting up web browser and using web browser. Then we published a book in Chinese : " World Wide Web : the hypermedia interface in the internet. [ 2 ]", in order to introduce this friendly and powerful interface to our people. At the same time, we began planning the big map of the Web service of our institute, Department and Institute of Zoology [ 3 ], National Taiwan University [4 ].
For the Web is still fresh to many people, we bring all these things to some younger professors to show what the Web is and what the Web can do for us. One of them had planned just in the same way, but he did not start yet. The others did not seen it before, but felt approvingly in our works. After introducing to the chairman, Prof. Lin, the web service started to work.
It is impossible for us to teach everyone how to use the web, so we leave links of WWW guide and links of biological resources [ 5 ] on the homepage. It is a self-educating process. If one follow our linking guideline, he or she will catch up the idea of WWW soon.
In the web service of Department and Institute of Zoology, NTU, we have three major branches : Introduction of department of zoology, NTU ; animals on campus and the researches. These branches are also our developing steps. You may see the changes in our service targets. At the first stage, the main user will be people in our department, the second and third stage, we will expand the service targets to the whole campus and people in Taiwan [ 6 ] who are interesting in our academic works.
We have finished the basic part of the web service, including the history, faculty , facilities, courses and publication. Some information are more dynamic, or have their time limit, so a "What's New" item is included here to make convenient to the regular users. Some teachers give rise to their basic introductions in the Web service, but most of them are too busy to learn how to write a personal homepage. We also strengthen the part of "Student Affairs" because the undergraduates learn fastest and will be limitless in the future. Such arrangement will be considerate of them and evoke their interests on the web.
It is still in the summer vacation now. We are waiting for a right time to demonstrate our Web service to the whole department. During this primary stage, we hope these simple but helpful things will shorten the distance from the internet to our teachers and students, and will attract some of them to join our teamwork.
We are investigating the animals appeared in our campus and collecting relative data now. Working in the "Animal on Campus", the members of the team will get proper and sufficient background knowledge to perform these topics. The first topic will be "birds on campus" because they are easy to observe and have more species can be working on. Because Taipei is a highly developed city, there is almost no place for wildlife to stay, so that NTU campus becomes a urban green island , attracting birds, other animals, and people who seek for a natural breathing. But we also find some strange animals which should not be wildlife in Taiwan. In the "Animal on Campus" series, we would like to introduce these animals to everyone, including students of NTU and citizen living around here, to emphasize the correlation between human and nature, and to make an appeal to everyone for the right attitudes in keeping pet(s).
The " Researches " will focus on the investigations of the teachers and graduate students. In contrast to the "Animals on Campus", it would be a specialized branches to share the academic achievements to the public. Department of Zoology owns a rich collection of specimen. We are very proud of the unique fauna here, and would like to share the joy of investigating these natural creative with people on Internet. We also have some remarkable studies on aquaculture techniques and disease control. By the way, there are also 5 to 8 Ph.D. thesis and 12 to 15 MS thesis presented per year. These are the academic parts of us, it would take time to screen suitable topics and to transform them into a WWW text. It sounds good but hard to make it proceeding. Although the an university should take on its response of public education, however, people in the " ivory tower " often neglect it. On the other hand, it is not easy to persuade people to share their knowledge and achievement to others, especially in a competing situation. On the unfriendly atmosphere, many interesting stories which is not standing in a conflict point, would be bury in the dust. It is a wisdom in tagging into such kind of gold mine.
Most of the staffs on our department are not familiar with network, whatever World Wide Web. Most of the content provided by the web service of zoology department is public information. We are very eager for more information about outstanding or undergoing research achievements in our department. But all the information should be protected by copyright, we can't use them without their permission. So the first thing we should do is to get the agreements for comprising those documents, including video, graphics, text...etc. It is a long way to convince them to authorize when they still keep doubt on the effect of WWW.
In the old building of zoology department which left from 1940s was full with laboratories. There is not any place to setup a new computer room for students to know more about Internet. If students want to use web in school, the only way he/she can do is borrowing personal computer from laboratories or the computer center in NTU. It is very not convenient for people to use net, such as searching information via web or reading one's e-mail, not mention about enjoy the web service of zoology department. Still now, we put our pages on www server in NTU and we still haven't server ( for example, sparc or pentium ) belonged to our department. If we want to provide on-line lectures and add the interactive feedback between student and mentorship, a high performance server is necessary. In 2 years, a new building will be complete and there is a reservation room for computer teaching and practicing. At that moment, maybe we will have our own PC room and server.
We also try to provide more information about ecological system in Taiwan, such as birds in Taiwan, butterfly and other insects in Taiwan... etc. Private and government organizations don't know what web can do used their database for society. So they are afraid that we will encroach their copyright. If they can cooperate with us and authorize to us, that will help us to provide more and good web service for our citizen.
Still now, people who in charge of this web service are only two, Chen and I. Both of us are Ph.D. students and must spend a lot of time on our research works. Although we have tried to find more spare time to provide more service and worked hardly, we think our content is still not good enough to the users. We plan to sponsor a training class for staffs and students, let them be well acquainted with those skills about design, construction, writing of web documents. This class may hold in two month. After then, we think maybe someone will join our group or provide us more supports.
We have a dream to provide children in primary or junior high school web service-like issue of environmental protection or the basic ecological knowledge. But in Taiwan, there are not enough web service in Chinese to introduce to those students, whatever those issues about life science . If we can get more manpower and financial support, we will provide more Chinese web services to young students and their teachers. we hope that will be happen people will be familiar with web and use web to learn some issues from primary school. Recently we organize a service in Chinese about ecological system of Tamsui, we introduce "Mangrove forest" ( a kind of plant only grows in wetland ) via web [ 7 ]. We are encouraged by many fervent feedback from those kids. Both of us think if web will become a part of our life, more webs in Chinese are needed. And in this way, that will promote general ability of our citizen for 21century.
Still now, our work don't get enough officially support at National Taiwan University. All we have only a personal computer ( 486-DX33 ) and a account on UNIX. For this reason, we just can provide some simple web service, more advanced service might begin on that time we have a server or Pentium which runs a server programs. So, if we can get more support in finances and manpower , our web service will be immaculate perfect.
In Easter society, the power of teachers is absolute authority. Many students were afraid of asking questions to teachers face to face. The best way to improve the effect of teaching and break the gaps between teachers and students is used electronic communication. In our department, there are many research groups to investigate different fields of life science. For lacking a good vertical communication, many staffs don't have a clear map about other staffs' researches and maybe both of them can cooperate for some topics or share information but they don't know. It is also hard to find a staff to discuss with student who has willing to do some studies on specific topics. If we want to improve this situation, we must do some changes in our communication way of department. We can design some lectures and collect a lots of related web sites for students and staffs to show the main bone of research orientation in our department. And use the forms and newsgroups will help lecturers to pay attention to the degree of progress of each students and solve the problem they meet . If our lecturers can construct FAQs and simple instructions about Network usage and related information about lectures, it will be help to people those who are not familiar with WWW and have a strong willing to learn. And people can manage learning by themselves and get more information about biology and other kind of information without limited time and location. By the web service, teachers and students can explore their research field and keep in front of research field to synchronize with other outstanding research groups.
We are looking forward to a better network environment. So that the treasures in the universities will become meaningful to the public. If the authority pay no attention to the fact that the network resources distributed unevenly, then WWW will cause a big gap between network users and others. The efforts what we try to distribute knowledge evenly may be totally distort.
![[ 8 ]](http://www.nsysu.edu.tw/internet/tanet.gif){kind=link}
.</i>
<dd><a href=){kind=link}