About - The Coaches



This Site The Team The Coaches > Tineke < Joke Thank You Fun	Tineke I am Tineke, 46 years old, happily married and I am one of the two coaches of this team. Last year I coached a team of only girls. This year I coached two mixed team (both: 3 girls, one boy). This 'Sensible Senses' team, and the 'Heavy on my Heart' team. I have coached ThinkQuest teams for several years now, and my main goal is to bring the students upon a higher level. And I also want to show the world that it is not always the smart students who are able to build a website. Most students who join a website competition are students with a high IQ and high education. But I have experienced that when you give special attention to students who are less ‘gifted' they can be so much more motivated and make some beautiful web-products too. I always stimulate the students to bring out the best in them and to show the world their ‘hidden' talents. I am a Social Worker and one of my responsibilities is the participation of young people in things that are important to them. I coach the Children's Council in Almere, and I coordinate a Teenage Media Centre. At this centre students of 14 – 18 years old learn how to use a photo camera or video camera or how to build a website or publish a newspaper. It is an instruction of the City Council (who pays my employers organisation) that we reach those students who will not use these media by themselves. For instance because they are poor and their parents can not pay for it. Or because they are ‘less intelligent' and their teachers think that they are not able to use it. In Almere it is part of the Community That Cares Project. In teaching the students we use the method of ‘peer teaching' as much as possible. This means that student of their own age are the teachers. It gives those young ‘teachers' much confidence to teach students of their own age what they just have learned themselves a few months ago. And it gives the new pupils the impression that it is not as difficult as they thought and that they can also learn it for themselves. Since I was always interested in media I have coached both teams in building this site. There was a big difference between the two teams because this team has a member who knows much more about building websites than I do. So my main task for this team was coordination, to keep them in contact with eachother and to be sure that they finished their job before the deadline. Joke has coached the team in using ‘proper' English, since she is an English Teacher at a Secondary School. We all used the dictionary a lot, but Joke was the one who was able to judge whether we used the translated words in the right way or not. The team members have picked an interesting subject. Not only did they want to search information on the internet or in books. But they were more interested in ‘personal stories about the subject'. So they wanted some questions answered like: Can blind people do everything that seeing people can do? Like for instance ice skating? How do you communicate when you can not hear? Etc. Gifted or less gifted students?? I think that all people can be 'gifted' in their own way. That has nothing to do with (emotional) intelligence. As you can see on this team, three of the members are joining a MBO school (Vocational Education) at this moment,. The Schools are called: Regional Trainings Centre. One team member (Femke) is still at secondary education, named HAVO. Which is called ‘senior general secondary education' in English. Read more of the Dutch system at this link I can assure you that education level has nothing to do with motivation of wanting to learn new things. The team members were enthusiastic from the beginning and highly motivated to make a quality product. They accepted the skills and non skills of each other and worked together as a good team. Foreign Students. I think ThinkQuest International is a great opportunity to meet and speak foreign students. From the start I tried to bring the team in contact with one or more students from another country, but that seemed to be very difficult. First I contacted Bill McWrath who we met last year in America . His daughter was enthusiastic to join the team, but eventually did not manage to contribute something to the site because she was very busy with her school. Than I contacted a friend in Ghana and asked him to bring us in contact to Ghanaian students who want to use the computer more. And although the first signs were very positive we did not succeed in recruiting students for this competition. There the main problem was the common use of computers and internet. After that I posted a request in the coaches forum of ThinkQuest International site, but that also did not gave any response. Not so much coaches use this forum (and I must confess that it is not 'my thing' either.) Last but not least I contacted one of the employees of the ThinkQuest helpdesk to help us to find some foreign team members. I am not quit sure what held back the foreign students (or coaches) to respond but maybe they thought it would be easier to join a team with foreign students who speak English as they do theirselves. I hope that in the future the ThinkQuest Organisation will invest more in bringing team members of different countries who do not speak the same language together.
"If I, deaf, blind, find life rich and intresting, how much more can you gain by the use of your five senses!"

Tineke