About The Team:

Welcome to the Bird Flu Team page. Here you can find personal biographies about each individual on the team, as well as an overall summary of what the team did.



"It all started when we were sitting in our Web 2 class, and the teacher announced that we would be entering the Thinkquest competition."

-Team Bird Flu


We quickly got our team together, consisting of four people in two different Web 2 classes. We brain stormed on possible topics we could do for the webpage. We reviewed the scoring rubric, and soon learned that the contest was more about content then it was design, which meant we needed a brilliant topic.

We browsed through the Thinkquest webpage, and found that Bird flu was an un-discussed topic. Bingo, we had a topic! We then came together as a team, and divided up the work load to the people who specialized in certain areas of the web contest. For instance, Ryan and James were called upon to do design, build, and code the website, while Sheila and Katherine worked on the content.

In order to find out more about each individual team member, the following are personal Biographies about each member of them, describing their experiences in the creation of the Bird Flu website:

Katherine

I am currently a junior in high school. I enjoy participating in the Model United Nations program that is run through the YMCA's Tri-HI-Y and Hi-Y clubs. I am currently the President of the International Court of Justice, which is a part of MUN. I have been a member of the International Cultural Association for the past three years, and I have enjoyed participating in the cultural activities that the club does. My main hobby is horseback riding, which I have been doing for the past nine years. I have my own horse, Edinburgh, who is a retired Thoroughbred racehorse.

I first got into web design when I took Webmastering I in 10th grade. I enjoyed it a lot because it lets you be creative but does not require any drawing skills like other design and art areas. I am in Web II this year and plan on taking Web III my senior year. On this web page I did the research and text writing. I enjoyed doing that side of the project because I was able to learn a lot as well as create the meat of the site.

Sheila

As a junior in high school, I try to do as much as I can at school and in the community. Yet, as a Filipino I try to share my culture with everyone. I am an active member in the BETA club, Mu Alpha Theta club and Interact club and I represent my culture at various heritage functions. I am also a photographer for the school year book and was a professional photographer for Lifetouch Portraits. I am a student ambassador and I have traveled to Europe and parts of Asia but I loved Italy and Hawaii the most. In the future I plan to have a career in the research of psychology because the human mind fascinates me. My ambition for life is expressed through my passion for art, competitions and a deep curiosity.

I approached web design in a computer literacy class and have been enthralled with it. After my trip to Europe, I made a website of my experience. I am excited about taking Web 3 at my school next year so I may explore and create more. It gives me an opportunity as an artist to show my talent not only on a canvas but on the web. Besides editing, I focused on the flash and media because aesthetics and interactivity are important and appealing. Enjoy!

Ryan

My name is Ryan, and above is a few listed things to let you have a chance of figuring out a little about me. Im 15 years old and I'm a sophmore in high school. I run track and Cross Country, however I like track the most. I run mainly the 800 meter and/or 4x800 meter relay. I've had a hard time over coming a lot of my injuries in my second year of track, but hopefully soon I will be back to the way I use to be.

I come from an Irish family. My grandparents were both born and raised in Ireland. In 1916 my grandfather moved here because of the booming work force and the "start of a new life" happening in America.

Some hobbies of mine include computers, gaming, web design, sports, and just hanging out with my friends. I still have no clue what I want to do after high school, and I probably never will.

The way I got involved in web design was one day I saw a half photoshop and half flash created site and ever since then I've always wanted to do that. I've been designing now for about 2 years and have made somewhere around 1,200 dollars by selling templates and other web designs.

Creating this site was a tough task because some of the members never really agreed on certain things. However our passion of wanting to win the over all competition made us just push harder when it started to get hard. I was in charge of designing and coding the site along with Jamie and for us it was very hard to deal with that and then having the long track practices after school. Now it's finished and I hope you look mainly at the hours we spent working together and I'm sure you will enjoy the site.

James

My name is James, and hopefully by reading the top section of the Team page, you already have a basic understanding about me, but please let me elaborate! I am 16 years old, and I'm a sophomore in high school. I run both Track & Field and Cross Country for my school, and I specialize in distance running events.

I enjoy reading about cars, both vintage and modern. I try to get an understanding of how they work, and I hope to work in the automotive field whether in Reaserch and Development or Design and Development fields (ex: Engineer).

One of my main hobbies is Web Design. When I'm done with my homework, I open up Photoshop and start with a blank canvas. Sometimes I sketch out the design of the webpage I plan to create before I even open up Photoshop. As you can probably guess, Photoshop is one of my favorite tools to help me aid in website publishing. I use plain old Notepad to do the coding. I hope to make web design a part time job of mine when my skills develop more.

The creation of the Bird Flu webpage was a long journey. Since my task was designing and building the webpage, I spent a lot of time browsing around other webpages, along with other Thinkquest winners' web pages and gathered ideas on a good design. In about a month, I had developed about 5 different designs, and I didn't really like any of them. Then, when I was just messing around, I came up with a design that both the team and I liked.

I started making it in Fireworks, and then imported it into Dreamweaver. Throughout my limited experience with website building, I've found that a good structure is a must for a good webpage, so I used Dreamweaver to code the page so that I wouldn't make any mistakes. After about a week and a half, I finished the design you see before you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Team Collaboration

Our team was a great fit. Each person was able to bring something to the web page that completed the idea we were aiming for. Ryan and James came up with a layout, coded it, picked a color scheme, and created an attractive, readable design. They also helped create interaction through Flash. Sheila provided concepts, as well as bringing them to the page, for graphic design and photography. She found most of the images we used on the sight and even created a Gallery to display the ones she thought were important to the web page. Katherine did the research on Bird Flu and created the text for the different pages. She also helped with the logo design and the creation of quizzes and a crossword puzzle.

Our team did face challenges like a very curren topic with few definite scientific facts about bird flu. New Bird Flu reports come out everyday and they news can differ according to the site you are at. It was really hard to keep up with all the news especially when one day they tell you Tamiflu works and the next week you hear the virus has shown resistance to it. Another problem we had as a group was finding a way to communicate what we were working on for the web page. Ryan and Katherine are in a different class than Sheila and James. We solved the problem by staying after school and leaving notes for each other.

Global Perspectives

Our team is made of two sophmore guys and two junior girls from two different Webmastering classes at our school. We made a strong effort to get group members from other countries but could not get any interest. We posted our information on the Thinkquest blog and emailed several schools around the world, including those in Egypt, Turkey, and England, but we never recieved answers.

Our group itself represents Irish and Germany in Ryan who has parents from both countries. He is even fluent in German. Sheila is Filipino and has visited there many times. Each one of us has studied a foreign language for at least two years and is very interested in the cultures of other people and the problems other countries face.

Knowing Bird Flu is a threat to the entire world population, we chose it as a topic that would enable us to study other countries. We researched articles in foreign papers such as India and China. We also searched for remarks made by the government officials of foreign countries. All of our text is a compilation of global information and world news. It reflects the world problem that Bird Flu is.

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