National Pingtung University Affiliated Experimental Elementary School—Immersing Pingtung Tobacco (Part 2): Exploring Industrial Emergence and Translating the Future of Industry

The "Dyeing the Clouds and Smoke" series of courses is a year-long (two semesters) interdisciplinary course for fourth-grade elementary school students. The course uses the idiom "dyeing the clouds and smoke" as its imagery, and explores learning through writing, poetry and painting, research, and diverse arts. It leads students into the Pingtung Tobacco Factory and its surrounding communities to explore the historical transformation and cultural memory of local artisans and community development.
The Pingtung Tobacco Factory, a testament to the trajectory of local industry and urban development, has been transformed into the Pingtung Tobacco 1936 Cultural Base, carrying rich local stories and contemporary innovative energy. Meanwhile, the development of the Pingtung Central Business District reflects the rise and fall of Pingtung city and the texture of its life. The course guides students to understand how places accumulate, transform, and continue over time, starting from their lived experiences.
Through an in-depth learning journey themed "Illuminating Memories, Imbuing Them with Aesthetic Appreciation," students engage in diverse methods, including community surveys, interviews, digital reading exploration, AI-assisted curation, leaf dyeing art, principles of aesthetics, woodworking and miniature creation, poetry writing, and creative dance. This transforms observation into creation and discourse. The course not only cultivates students' aesthetic literacy and expressive abilities but also guides them to focus on local sustainability issues, practice action and responsibility, and gradually become caring citizens who understand their hometown and society.