About this Website
This website was designed by the Thinkquest 2005 to 2006 team from the Galvin Middle School in Wakefield, MA. We decided to make the site after one of our teammates, Mark, had received information about this competition from Oracle. Soon, Mark and Chris, another teammate, assembled a team of another person, Brian, and a teacher for a Coach, Mr. G. By October of 2005, our team was ready with ideas for the competition. During the middle of October 2005, we decided that it would be best to have the topic of Hydrogen Fuel Cells for the website. Our third teammate, Konrad , started gathering information for the website. Chris designed the CSS code for the site and started working on some XHTML, JavaScript, and Flash animations while Mark did the majority of Flash animations for the introduction. Currently, some of the animations are still being developed and currently are temporarily replaced by animations from other sites, all credited for in the website.
Our website went through many different designs with different ideas, media, and changes made to the website through February 2006. We had then finally created the last major design for the website. From there on, we started to insert the research we gathered into the website. By March 21st, 2006, we were done with the basic website. Here is a timeline for the website's development:
October 2005: Enrollment
In October, our team enrolled in the competition, and started to gather ideas for the website. When we had reached a final agreement upon what are topic would be, we came up with a basic website design and started basic research on the website.
November 2005: The Homepage
In November 2005, our research was gathering to about 5 pages worth of text for the website. We had started rewriting some of the text, and we decided it was time to add some media into the website. At this point, the CSS had been redesigned a little bit, and we had a completed homepage.
December 2005: The New Website
By December, we were finding difficulties in the website's design. Chris developed a new website design in which the first page of information on hydrogen fuel cells was added. Mark, at this point, had almost finished the introduction to the website. Konrad had finally finished researching the information for the website, and we began to add proper citations to the website.
January 2006: Research
At this time in the website development, the team had finished the temporary design for the website. We started to amend our research and completely rewrite everything for the website. During this stage of the competition, we were ahead of schedule. Mark had finished the temporary introduction and the site was on its way.
February 2006: Behind Schedule
This was the only point in the competition when we were behind schedule. We had not submitted the Site Profile at this time, and we only had completed less than half of the website's content. At this point, we were all racing to finish the website.
March 2006: Preliminary Rounds
In March 2006, we finally had finished the basic website. There is not much more to say here. We will be improving upon the website, but there is not much else to do from here. Good luck peer reviewers!
April 2006: Peer Reviews
At the peer review section of the competition, we awaited our scores on the website. Our reviews were all at different intervals (one high, and medium, and a low), and we did not get much feedback, so we had to develop the rest of the website based on ideas that we had that would enhance the design for the website. Mark started to get to work on replacing temporary animations, Konrad started to research our subject matter again to cleanup any information, and Chris redesigned the website with new buttons, animations, and text.
May 2006: The Final Deadline
Finally, the competition was heating up. May, for our team, was crunch time in the competition where we had to test, remake, and finalize parts of our website. Some features that we were unable to keep up with had to be removed from the final design of the website, which would probably be used in next year's competition. Now it is time to wait and see how we placed in Thinkquest 2006!
About the Project
This project was meant to inform you about hydrogen fuel as an alternative energy source mostly in transportation. To make this project possible, the Galvin Middle School Thinkquest '06 team had to use special tools, design techniques, and skills to make this website possible.
During the competition, our teammates learned how to use Macromedia/Adobe products such as Fireworks, Flash, and Dreamweaver to create the animations, design, and the images for the website. In Flash 8, we were able to make animations from images that were created with Fireworks. Using Dreamweaver cut down on development time of the website, and also helped visually piece together a good CSS design for the website.
Besides tools used in the project, we also needed good team collaboration to make the website look professional, realistic, and retain a neutral point of view on the subject matter. To do this, our team had meetings about twice a month to fine tune the website and add ideas that would make the website work better for the audience. Our team also tried to keep the website as neutral as possible by not showing any sorts of political or philosophical point of views of the teammates to make sure that this website would not be offensive and would appeal to a widespread audience rather than a narrow quantity of people. Thank you for the ride in Thinkquest '06 - Galvin Middle School Thinkquest Team.