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It's all about
teamwork!
We began
with a team of three New Jersey team members who have known each other
since kindergarten [6 years]. We are all best friends and are used
to working together. [Sometimes we get tired of each other but we
still like to work together!]
We found our New York team members through the E.P.A.
[Environmental Protection Agency]. Someone there told us that a
class was studying the Croton water system that gives New York City its
water. Our coach contacted the teacher who was doing it and she
found two really nice team members for us. We called them and met
them online on meeting days. Those two members knew each other in
kindergarten--just as long as we did!
What did we do?
Our
coach decided that we should do the ThinkQuest website competition
backwards. We made a practice web and learned to make a website
before we actually began the competition. She said that we could
concentrate on the information for the website if we didn't have to slow
ourselves down by learning to make the site at the same time.
All team members wrote reports on assigned topics, edited the pages that
were written, took pictures and notes on trips, and selected the
theme. Our New York members came in after that had been done.
Some team members did different things. [Made-up
names.]
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Carole--Visited
and wrote about watersheds, worked with Samantha on aqueducts, and
wrote articles.
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Elizabeth--Made
hyperlinks for the site, looked up words for the site dictionary,
searched the Internet for water games, puzzles, and activities, drew
the aquifer and pump pictures, made the online survey, and did the
in-school blind water test.
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Katie--Made
all the tables on the site, worked with the navigation menu, edited
graphics, selected pictures for the site, looked up words for the
site dictionary, made an online survey, made graphs, searched the
Internet for water games, puzzles, and activities, and did the
in-school blind water test, and edited pictures, and made the main
graphic, and did the water filter and page.
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Monica--Made
all of the pages and inserted the theme and shared borders, made
bottom graphic, and did the in-school blind water test.
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Samantha--Visited
and wrote about watersheds, took notes, worked a lot on aqueducts,
wrote articles, and took digital pictures.
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What did the coach do?
Our
coach taught us how to make a web site. She walked us through the
steps when we made our practice web. We learned even more when we
worked on the ThinkQuest site because we had to include things that we
hadn't done before. Our coach taught us how to use the programs we
needed to use. She collected our sources for us and made photocopies
of what we needed so that we could organize ourselves better. Each
page had a folder and she printed out the web pages when we were done so
that we could edit them. She organized lots of trips for us and made
sure that we had cameras and notebooks. Our coach typed our reports
and taught us how to go in and edit them. The site was our idea and
she helped us make it happen.
When did we meet?
We met
once a week after school from October to June. We met from 9 a.m. to
2 p.m. once a week during the summer. We didn't start the ThinkQuest
site until the guidelines came out and we had been signed up. Before
that we did a practice web that was nowhere as big as this one.
How was the site
made?
We
did the following:
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Brainstormed ideas
based on the ThinkQuest competition guidelines. This took a week
or two to figure out.
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Got information and
began to do research. We found out that most information was for
adults and we had a hard time understanding most of it. We
decided that we needed a different kind of help.
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We looked for adult
partners to help us get the information we needed. Our local
water department, a larger town water department, and a state water
authority agreed to give us tours and info. As our site got
bigger, we got help from a dowser and a bottled water company.
We finally got information in a way we could understand!
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We picked a theme for
the site, a title, and set up the pages with tables, menus, and
graphics.
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Aqueducts were a real
problem but we found one in New York. Since this was too far
away for us to go, we found two team members from New York City who
were closer.
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We wrote the pages and
edited them lots of times.
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We made the navigation
menu and took pictures for the site. Some team members made
graphics for the site.
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The coach uploaded the
site.
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