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Our SiteLearn about the creators of the site.
This web site was created for the Oracle Thinkquest Competition. You can find more information about this competition at thinkquest.org. Various teams compete by building an educational web site on a certain topic. We hope that when you tour the site, we can share what we have learned through our research.
The site was designed and produced by the students on the Future Transportation team without the use of any templates. All of the interactive activities were created from scratch by the students on the Future Transportation team. All the content on our site is attributed to the appropriate sources on the bottom of each page. All photographs from other sources are used with permission. The music playing on the intro is courtesy of Subreal.de.
The students worked completely independently to plan, outline, design, and create content for the site. They set their own deadlines and worked as a group to build an educational site.
Daniel
Daniel attends Kilmer Middle School and lives in Northern Virginia. He is our webmaster: he designed the site, along with creating the interactive activities. He also researched and wrote the "Cars" section.
Kushal
Kushal also attends Kilmer Middle School and lives in Northern Virginia. He researched and wrote the "Airplanes" section. He also compiled and created the glossary.
Matt
Matt lives in Lincolnshire, Illinois and attends Daniel Wright Junior High. He researched and wrote the "Trains" and "Other" section.
Our Coach
Our coach, Stacie Kreitman, was always available for help if we needed it. She is the science teacher of two team members at Kilmer Middle School in Vienna, Virginia. We thank her for being our coach.
Teamwork fueled the building of our site. The project was a joint effort contributed to by all of the team members. Between the two different states we live in, the two different schools we attend, and the two different time zones we work in, communication could potentially have been hard. However, due to the usefulness of such tools as e-mail, IM and chats, collaboration over distances was generally easy.
With our combined strengths, we were able to put together a comprehensive site. The design and interactive sections were created by Daniel. Matt wrote content. Kushal also wrote content, along with creating the glossary and related activities.
At first we faced the problem of finding team members. Daniel knew a friend from summer camp who lived in Illinois. (This friend would later drop off of the team.) The original topic they decided on was bridges, but there still were not enough team members. These two team members each found someone else to join the team. The student in Illinois found Matt, who went to a different school in Illinois. Daniel found Kushal, a student at his new school.
Bringing in the new team members lead to a re-examining of the topic for the web site. There was conflict over the subject matter. After a long chat room discussion, it was decided that "Future Transportation" would be the new topic. We then relayed a series of e-mails that laid down the outline for our content.
We were all able to help each other out along the way. When we originally gave out the assignments for each part, nobody had that much prior knowledge on the part they were writing. When it turned out Matt had some previous experience with some of the technologies, parts were swapped so everyone could work with what they already knew or found interesting.
The hardest obstacle arrived when one team member, who had previously been enthusiastic about the team, was unable to follow through and complete his work. This was due to other commitments and a lack of time. With a fourth of the team gone, the other members worked quickly to fill in for the missing part.
In the end, we were able to churn out an informative, functional, interactive web site. With everyone doing their part, the creation of the site was made much easier. Without all the members of the team, our site would not have turned out as it did.
Our three team members come from two different schools located in two different states. Daniel and Kushal live just outside Washington D.C., while Matt lives near Chicago. Growing up in a metropolitan area, Daniel and Kushal are used to heavily congested car traffic and large highways such as the Beltway that encircles the U.S. capital.
Matt, living in Illinois, is accustomed to very light traffic with virtually no local public transportation. Many workers commute to Chicago from the suburban area of Illinois where they live. They generally use cars but once in the city have a subway system available.
Kushal also brings in a third perspective. He often travels back to India, where his family came from. There he sees the crowded streets, filled with bicyclers. The need for quality, efficient transportation is high in India's large population.
As we went through the process of choosing our topic, we considered several ideas before coming to future transportation. We ultimately picked the topic because we saw the pitfalls and needs of our own local transportation systems. We saw that there were problems to be fixed and technologies to be enhanced, and we knew that the future would bring many improvements and changes.
While researching with our teammates, we learned that different areas of the world have varying transportation needs. Transportation systems and technologies have been developed and adjusted for the respective needs of regions across the globe. The world's diverse transportation reflects this idea.