Hello! My name is Ammu, and I'm currently a senior at Pinkerton Academy. Before I go into my involvement on the project, let me give you a little bit more information about myself. Although web design and international collaboration might be the most obvious of my interests when you see this project, there are other interests, personality quirks, and activities of mine which define me as an individual. I'm a vegetarian, and I have been since I was three, when I found out that the meat did, in fact, come from Old MacDonald's little friends. I'm passionate about global issues like poverty, hunger, improving access to education, advancing human rights, promoting tolerance, encouraging diversity, and protecting the environment. I love playing tennis, and I play for my high school. I'm a big fan of the sciences and mathematics, and I'd like to study biochemistry or biomedical in college. After that, perhaps I'll pursue a medical degree; if not, I'd like to go into research.

Having been involved in the ThinkQuest competition before, I got to thinking about how much literacy in technology has helped me throughout my academic career, how much it undoubtedly will help me in my future endeavors, and how critical it is that all students are given equal opportunities to obtain such literacy. For the e-Divide site, I was mostly a content writer. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the e-Divide team to make this website, and my awe at the finished project is only a small part of that enjoyment. More than that, I liked the progress we made together during the course of the project. Ngoc's creativity, Viet Anh's animation, Jasmin's artwork, Gerben's web design, and Loay's translation—regardless of the fact that I can't recognize more than a few words of it—amaze me, and I'm thrilled by the fact that we were able to combine our individual strengths into a whole. I enjoyed late-nights-avec-Yahoo!, spending quality (albeit hectic and sleepy) time with my teammates. I enjoyed learning more about them, not on a purely professional level, but personally and culturally as well. Even more than all of that, I thrive on the feeling that I walk away from this experience with more than just an awesome website and a few new acquaintances; working with the e-Divide team has been a stress-, giggle-, and fun-filled adventure from which I come away with fond memories and amazing friends. In addition, I would like to thank our coaches, Mrs. Deborah O'Connor and Mr. Jonathan Staats, for their help and support throughout the course of the project; we couldn't have done this without you! Finally, I'd also like to thank ThinkQuest itself for providing students worldwide with this opportunity. Well apart from being one of the most amazing experiences there is, it's also helping to bridge the e-Divide.

I hope you find our site not only informative, but inspiring.

Hello, my name is Gerben and I am currently a first year student at the Hague College. Here is a bit about me:

Since I was a little lad, I was very interested in technical things. Taking things apart was my favorite thing to do. At primary school there wasn't much to do for me and I was looking forward to high school. But when I got to high school, I realized that high school is not a goal but a way to get there. But where to?

In the third grade I met a few guys who were so called "Nerds". And soon my image of me being a architect changed into one of me controlling global networks. --a vision of global connectivity. My friends showed me a wonderful world of interactivity combined with some awesome technical achievements. During my last two years at high school I really got involved in computers. I did realize there was much to learn and that the ICT is still a growing interest.

While I was in fourth grade I met Jonathan. He was the silent guy sitting in the back of the class, doing his maths. I looked at him and I noticed that he was somewhat like me.

I soon found out that Johnny was indeed very interested in computing and we got to be friends. He told me about a project called ThinkQuest, and that he was recruited by a girl called Ammu. When I thought about it I remembered such a project, some friends of mine worked on a website in the second grade, and they won the ThinkQuest Netherlands edition. I got very interested in TQ and the project Johnny was working on turned out to be Patent Battles. Half way the project I asked Ammu, (I still couldn't believe that a young girl lead an international website project), if I could join their forum. I was given access to the forum and could observe how the project progressed. Since then we have kept in contact. In my early fifth grade period Ammu asked Johnny and me to join the ThinkQuest team for a new contest entry. Unfortunately we had our final exam preparations so we couldn't take part. I am happy to be the team's webdesigner in this entry.

So what was my work in this project? I am the web designer so I make sure the content and pictures gathered by other team members end up in the artwork supplied by Jasmin. It's like building a house. I was supplied with the design and every detail, like the colors of the curtains, the flooring material, and the type of the light switches. So I didn't really have to think of the project itself, I just had to build it. And that is exactly what I did.

I will always remember my hours long conversations with Ngoc about the difference between the western world and the Asian way of thinking. Nor will I forget the long, late night discussions with Ammu. This was all very important to me, but I will never ever forget the moment that I found out that even someone with limited access to computers and internet can design such a nice web-artwork as Jasmin did. It was this moment I felt that I am spoiled in a way many people only dream about. I had the ability to grow up with free access to the internet, with enough funds to buy myself a computer and at every school I have been there was plenty of opportunities to work with PCs. In my current study it's hard to imagine a life without computers. But a power black-out last week did make me realize how it feels to have no access digital information. I was unable to do my homework, I was unable to check my schedule for the next day and I was not able to contact any of my friends. This moment of being kicked out of my digital world and, for a brief time, experience the situation of many people around the world showed me again that it is important to tell the world about the information inequality.

I enjoyed building this website with this wonderful international team and I hope you enjoyed visiting this website.

Hello, my name is Jas. I am 17 years old. I was born in India, grew up in Mauritius, but my family moved to India recently when my father decided to pursue a job opportunity here. I currently live less than two miles away from the hospital I was born. I know this is really very rare these days. I am doing my college studies now, but I am enrolled in an online correspondence college program and I also take the help of a private tutor when needed. I have been fortunate to have had a computer at home for several years now. However, I do not have Internet connection at home. I do all my work at home and go to an Internet café to e-mail everyone. Due to security reasons, I was nervous to FTP or upload information to the server from the Internet café. I went to my uncle's house, an hour away, every now and then to upload content to the server. I am writing this to inform how difficult it is accomplish simple things, which many children in the developed countries can perform at home or school any time of the day. Despite all the long hours and hard work, I must say that I really enjoyed working on the project. I had taken a few short-term web design and graphic courses in the past.

Most of my work on this project was related to graphics; something that I thoroughly enjoy. It was one of the hardest web design project that I have ever worked on, the topic is abstract and very unique. Coming up with unique graphics to convey the message was not only challenging, but inspiring. I really liked working with everyone; it was a special experience for me. I joined this project very late, only in 2006. It was just a few weeks before the official deadline. I really would like to thank Ammu for finding me and asking me to join the project. She contacted me sometime in January 2006, several weeks after one of their previous team member had dropped off the team shortly after the original team had come together. I also want to thank the coaches for helping and guiding me whenever I needed. Thank you everyone and I hope you all enjoy our site.

Hi everyone…my name is Loay and I'm 19. I was a former student at Saint Marc (a French school) and now I'm enrolled in my 2nd year in the college of Dentistry at Misr International University (MIU), Egypt. I live between two cities Alexandria (my home town) and (Cairo where I study) I like reading, traveling, listening to music (Rock and Metal), partying, web designing, collecting coins stamps tickets and brass rubbing. I enjoy as well learning languages in order to be able to contact various people (I speak French, English, Arabic and a bit German) . Now comes a question why a medical student is interested in computer stuff…the answer is simple, being a dental school student motivates me to integrate IT in my future work.

I've been dealing with computers since DOS and windows 3.11 so, it's been a long time since I realized how important to interact with technology. I started web designing since 5 years with my colleague Amir and we did a lot of projects together. I won the platinum and star awards in the Think Quest Africa 2002 contest for AIDS the Serial Killer. Now I m working as a part time designer (web sites, brochures, restaurant menus, presentations).

I've known Ammu for 3 years through emails and this past year we came together to work on this site. As the French translator I started working after the content was done (this was during my 1st semester final exams). After a while I did the brochure. I was in contact with that great team through mails because I barely find free time (u know I study in a practical faculty beside my part time work), we had also some chat sessions. I know that the work that I was supposed to do in this project wasn't that big, but I think I helped a bit.

When we chose the Digital Divide topic, I thought that it's a unique one. It's my first time to work in computers and Internet category as u used to work in health or social science topics. The information inequality is an important issue because without access to hardware or software there is an accessibility inequality. It's been such a nice experience working with this marvelous team.

Enjoy Jasmin's Artwork, Ammu and Ngoc's wisdom, Gerben's accurate programming, Viet Anh animations and games…and a special thanks to Ms. Deb and Johnny for their support.

Hi everybody! My name is Ngoc and I'm 17. I'm a second-year student at University of Newcastle, Australia. I major in Mathematics, a highly flexible degree which allows me to take interesting electives like software engineering, chemistry and biomedicine. I plan to do a second major in public health and be an epidemiologist. Apart from doing ThinkQuest during my free time, I enjoy playing sports, making wooden models, playing the piano, reading manga (Japanese comics) and playing computer games.

November to January is our summer vacation in Australia, so most of the work on eDivide was done while I was in Vietnam, my home country. During this time I also worked for a research center. I wrote content for the animations and analyzed the data we collected for Our Project.

This year ThinkQuest experience is just as unique as the previous cycle. I had the opportunity to work with and learn from my friendly, humorous and talented team mates. Most my ideas came when I was reading Ammu's creative writing, when I was emailing Gerben or Loay, and when I was looking at Jas' amazing artwork or Viet Anh's rich animations. The more I know them, the more they inspired me with their enthusiasm and great personality. Not only that, we carried out surveys and interviews which allowed me to learn more about my team-mate's countries.

Digital Divide in education is a great topic – it takes me one-step closer to my lifetime dream. When I was in Vietnam, my dream was to complete the quest for the Elixir of Life of the pioneering chemists. I often skipped breakfast and lunch to buy lab equipments, or longed at a chemical store on Sundays, thinking of a way to make such equipments myself out of wooden sticks and rusted nails. Two years afterwards I came to Australia, where they have everything I had dreamed of, and they have students who take everything for granted. This experience changed the course of my life. My final goal is to make a difference to the education system in developing countries. I hope one day no other student would have to experiment with wooden sticks and rusted nails like I did.

I would like to thank Ammu, Jas, Viet Anh, Gerben and Loay, for being great team members. I also would like to thank our coaches, Ms. Deb and Mr. Johnny for their excellent support, technically and mentally. A special thanks is dedicated to my parents, my host family in Australia, and all of my friends who supported me with this project.

Thank you – our visitors. We hope you find our website informative and entertaining.

My name is Viet Anh. I'm a senior at Cimarron-Memorial High School, Las Vegas, Nevada as an exchange student from Hanoi, Vietnam. I like challenges, especially ones in Computer Science. I first met a computer five years ago and fell in love with it immediately. I have been doing a lot with my computer: programming, making games, solving Informatics algorithm problems, and designing software and website. I joined and won some first prizes national and regional contests on solving problems and making software. Besides, I'm also interested in new technology, such as artificial intelligence and robotics. Recently, I joined the FIRST international robotics competition and won the Arizona Regional Finalist award. However, those I had done so far were mainly to satisfy my hunger in computer knowledge. Hence, I decided to participate in the ThinkQuest challenge with several international friends. Now, I not only had chances to make friends with cool people all over the world, learn more experiences and knowledge, but also was able to contribute my computer skills to help people and improve this world. My dream right now is to get into a college famous for computer science to learn more about computer and become an IT expert.