The website, "Ride My Car" was developed by the Cruizin' Tigerz ThinkQuest team to share information with anyone age eight and up who is interested in cars. On this website, you can learn about the history of the automobile, how cars work, how to be safe when driving, and the future of the automobile. The website is complete with fun activities that include a quiz, madlib story, and word search. Little known and fun facts can be found on each page.

The Cruizin' Tigerz hope that you think Ride My Car has been a fun and informative website. The goal of this website was to make learning about cars an exciting adventure. Find out where the information for this site was found and who helped make Ride My Car so much fun! Next>>

About Us

You will need Windows Media Player to view the Photo Stories.

Hi my name is Breanne. I am a member of the Cruzin' Tigerz . I have 2 brothers and no sisters. My favorite sport is softball. I am very tall. When I grow up I want to be a nurse like my mom. I have a mini chihuahua and a weiner dog. We named the chihuahua Minnie and the weiner dog Oscar Myer Weiner. I helped write the page about safety and helped with the research for the site. I helped with the drawings, animations, and photos for our site. I did most of the typing because I am the fastest at typing.Thats me! Breanne's Photo Story

Hi! my name is Daniel. I am a member of the Cruzin' Tigerz at West Blocton Elementary School. I did research, writing, proof reading, and took some pictures for the website. I also helped write the questions and answers for the quiz. I helped Juwan with the word search puzzle. I love sports and like to read. I also like science. I have 2 cats and 1 dog. I love cars. When I grow up I want to be an architect. Daniel's Photo Story

Hi! My name is Jacob. I talk alot. I have four brothers.There names are Brandon, Danny, Corey, and Mikey. I am the second youngest child. I play football and I manage for the high school football and basketball teams. I also take art lessons. My favorite subjects in school are math and P.E. I love lunch, too. I have a pet named Snikers. I do research for our team. I helped write the page on safety and the fun facts on each page. I wrote the madlib story and I made all the anchors for the glossary. I love being on the ThinkQuest team. Good job, team! Jacob's Photo Story

Hi my name is Jaylon. I am a member of the Cruzin' Tigerz. I helped with writing and research on this website. Daniel and I helped write the questions for the quiz. Daniel, Juwan, and I did the word search, too. My favorite subjects are reading, language arts, math, and writing. I also enjoy sports and cars. I have been a member of our county's children theater group for 4 years. I am very competitive. I have one dog and a brother. When I grow up I want to be a writer. I love being on the ThinkQuest team! Jaylon's Photo Story

Hi! My name is Juwan. I have one sister and brother. Their names are Jelynn and Cameron. I love baseball, basketball, and football. My favorite subject is math. My favorite food is pizza. I have one dog. I do research for my team. I helped pick out the books from our school library. I helped with the word search puzzle. I also helped put all the links in the site. I love being on ThinkQuest team. I've learned alot about making a website. Juwan's Photo Story

Hi, my name is Mrs. Harris and I'm the ThinkQuest coach, computer teacher, and technology coordinator for our school. This is the second year we have entered the ThinkQuest competition. This year's team is very creative and our team members have been working very hard to build this website. None of this year's students were on the ThinkQuest team last year, so they have learned everything about website building from scratch.

The team met as a group every Friday morning, and worked on the site independently during their computer lab time each day. They are a diverse group, yet are the best of friends. Each of these students had a special talent or skill to contribute to the project. Jaylon and Jacob are our "thinkers" and often see trouble spots before they ever occur. Daniel is very creative and contributed many great ideas. He was able to help with proof-reading and suggested changes to the site to help polish it. Juwan is full of information. He is serious about reading and knows our school library better than most any stude. Breanne is a very good typist and is creative. She is a talented artist. All team members are focused and dedicated learners. They spent many hours drawing, reading, writing, and working on photos for our site. The Cruizin' Tigerz have stuck to their task and all of us have learned about team work, cooperation, website building, and cars!

How We Worked Together

We are the Cruizin Tigerz! By Sarah (one of our friends and classmates)

It didn't take us long to decide on a topic. After only a few minutes we agreed that we were all interested in cars and we wanted to know more about them. We decided to name our website, "Ride My Car". We chose our subtopics and began to look on the Internet for articles about the automobile. We printed them, read them, and highlighted the important information. We checked books out of our school library about the history of the automobile and books about cars in general. We read the articles and books and worked in groups of two to put the information we wanted to use in our own words. Everyone worked on research for the site. Jaylon and Daniel did much of our writing. Juwan and Breanne helped with typing. Breanne worked on editing the photos. Breanne found Buddy Bug, named him, and gave him a face. Jacob wrote the madlib story since he has the best sense of humor. Jaylon and Daniel wrote the questions and answers for our quiz and Juwan made our word search puzzle. Juwan and Jacob make the anchors and links in our site. They looked up the definitions for the glossary.

Next, we began the work in our new web editor, Dreamweaver. We had never made a website before, so Mrs. Harris had to show us what to do. We found the directions for rotating images on the Internet. Ms. Janet Taylor from The University of Montevallo told us how to create the bookmarks, or anchors for our pages. She also showed Mrs. Harris how to use Photo Story 3 and Mrs. Harris taught us how to make our photo stories. A University of Alabama student helped Mrs. Harris learn how to make a madlib story and use javascript to make our quiz. Then, she taught us how to do it. It was fun!

We decided to go and visit Mr. Dewayne Deerman, a local business man who owns a body shop. Mr. Deerman has many photos of cars he has helped restore. While there we saw an old 1920's truck sitting in the garage. He moved it outside for us so that we could take pictures on the truck. The truck belonged to his graddaddy and still runs. He gave us information on how a car works and let us look inside his cars.

We took photos of the parts of a car. Mr. Brian Lemley is a mechanic who owns his own business in town and he helped us to identify the parts on the page, "How a Car Works". He also helped us with some pictures of car parts.

We emailed people we knew and relatives of people who do not live here and asked them to send us photos of their cars. We also asked for pictures of cars that belonged to their grandparents and parents. These pictures were used to make our photo gallery.

We learned alot about cars that we didn't know. We learned how to build a website, too. This is our team's first ThinkQuest competition and we have had a blast working on this website. We hope you learn as much from it as we did!

Global Perspective

Our website shows how much the automobile has changed our world. The invention of the automobile has allowed people who live far away from cities to sell their goods in the city. It has allowed people who would not have ever left their own towns to travel to other places. The invention of the automobile led to the invention of other forms of transportation which allow people to go all over the world quickly.

The primary focus of this website is on the automobile's impact on the United States, however, the industry has changed so much over the last few years that no country in the world can stand alone and be successful in the car industry. Communication between countries is a requirement to meet the demands of the public. Steps are being taken by the industry to provide buyers with better, more fuel efficient automobiles. The public's demand for cars that use alternative fuel is causing companies to develop new technologies to keep the environment safe.

Car manufacturers want to be the first to come out with new technology and are always inventing new ways to use computers in cars to make them more desirable to the public. The students working on this website realize that car manufacturers in different countries rely on each other. One company may use another company's engine, or other parts to build their own brand of car. It is hard to say today that one brand of car is better than another because they are all entertwined.

The students on this website team represent various backgrounds, but they have one thing in common. All are dedicated learners and demand high quality work of themselves and each other. Each one of them made an outstanding effort to communicate clearly the goals and objectives of this site to each other. They were excited about the topic from start to finish and worked effectively and efficiently to produce a website that would appeal to a variety of people.