Alonzo
My team, Earth Buddies, collaborated in different ways. That means we worked together to make this awesome site. I am good with technology, so I helped make a lot of the main pages. Everyone on the team did something different. Some people helped design the “accessories” to the site, like the logos, buttons, and banners. Some people organized what we should do to help the site and then everyone wrote reports. Everyone on the team checked links and edited each other's pages. When someone on the team didn’t know what to do, other kids helped him/her. We each did something to help the site become what it is now. Once when somebody accidentally made their screen go upside down, I helped them figure out how to correct the problem. You put us all together and you get one terrific site!
Arun
I contributed
many different things to our website. I wrote the content for
Rainwater Harvesting, Biofuels, and two endangered animals
(Orangutans and Komodo Dragons). I also designed and built the
SEEK calculator and ran the online survey to collect about 100
responses. I put the survey results in a brief report including
some graphs. I narrated my web page on Rainwater
Harvesting, and created some crossword puzzles, word searches,
and quiz questions for the site, mostly on my own topics.
I also collaborated with my teammates. I watched the website
closely as it developed, making sure that my writing followed
the same style as that of other teammates. My Wisconsin buddies
gathered a lot of responses to my online survey. I also
contributed puzzles and clues to the team's effort.
We communicated mostly by e-mail. At first it was hard to
communicate because of the time difference. Later I realized
that if I could put things in the e-mail before I went to bed,
my Wisconsin buddies would receive them at the start of their
day. And when they sent stuff to me, I'd see it at the start of
my day. This way, our website was worked on around the clock!
I also used my individual strengths to create this site. I
am good at research and writing, and applied my strength to
topics such as rainwater harvesting and biofuels. Both of these
practices are more common in India, so I used my winter holiday
to collect information on them. I read a lot of web pages to
create the SEEK calculator, and worked with my coach and parents
to conduct the online survey.
My teammates and I helped each other overcome challenges.
I tried to help out with as many tasks as I could, and tried to
make my work similar to those of my teammates. My online survey
had some hiccups, but my coach and parents helped me work those
out.
Jacob
We collaborated by thinking of ideas for a topic for our site. We each came up with three or four ideas and then picked one to write about. Once we had our main topic we chose related topics. We decided together which of these topics we each were going to write about. It was challenging coming up with a name for our site that we all agreed upon, but we put our minds together and came up with Earth Buddies.
I worked with my teammates by helping them create a main page. We each thought of sentences and then put them into the main page. I also helped out by designing the main page. For example we decided to change some colors on the Earth Buddies logo. Jonah and Alonzo brought their past experience to the team because they both were on a team last year. They helped the rest of us with things that we didn’t understand. Jonah was also very creative in designing the S.E.E.K. logo.
I also researched and wrote the web pages about Water Pollution and Conservation, the Bald Eagle, and many more. When I needed help, I just asked my coach or one of my teammates and they were always there for me.
Jonah
Hi, my name is Jonah. I am one of the experienced people on this site, because I was a team member of a site last year. I was very involved in the design of the site and how things looked. On the At Home page, you might have seen the house with labeled rooms on it. I was the person who created the house. I made the crossword game and created two of the main pages and a base page. I also helped to create the Flash introduction to the site along with Alonzo and Meredith. The site design was hard, but all of my teammates and I thought it turned out cool and kid friendly. The design was very complex so all of us had to work extra hard.
Writing all of the reports was a tough process, but my partners and I made it through. The way we did it was by helping each other over all sorts of problems on the way. I wrote the Gorillas, Solar Energy, and Water Power pages and worked on transferring my teammate Arun's reports on Water Harvesting, Komodo Dragons, and Orangutans onto the site templates we created. All of us really did what was needed to be done on time. Since I am good at the technology part of the site, I helped my teammates when they got stuck putting their reports onto the site.
I think that our site has turned out great thanks to all of the collaboration, teamwork, skill, and hard work!
Meredith
My team members and I cooperated together in many ways in order to create this website. First, we brainstormed topics together and decided who would write each of the reports. Another way we worked together was that if anyone had a question about something, we would just ask each other and then someone would show that person how to do it. In this way, we all helped each other overcome any challenges or difficulties that we faced. Also, three of us made a slideshow to go along with the S.E.E.K. survey that was written by our teammate in Singapore. We showed the slideshow to the 4th and 5th grade classrooms in our school and had them take the S.E.E.K. survey. Another example of how we collaborated was that we took turns explaining the “Waste-Free Lunch Day” to our school during our lunch hours. On the “Waste-Free Lunch Day,” we walked around the lunchroom and took pictures of some of the kids’ waste-free lunches.
These are just some of the many ways we cooperated and worked together to build this site. If any one of us had had to make this website by ourselves, it would have been impossible. Instead, by having 6 heads working together, including Arun in Singapore, we could use each other's strengths and ideas. We were also able to get things done more efficiently by working together as a team.
From October until April, there were many tasks that I did to contribute to the making of this website. Once our team came up with an overall topic, I chose the specific reports that I was going to write. I wrote about the 3R’s, Timber Wolves, and Electricity. In order to write about these topics, I had to research them and find a lot of information.
Another area of the website that I worked on was the tree and canopy design that appears on every page. Since Rosie and I are good at drawing and designing things, we came up with this design and created it together.
Later on, I created the Earth Buddies logo with the children around the outside of the globe. I also worked on some of the buttons on the tree trunk that lead to different pages in the website.
Another area of the site that I helped with was the Flash introduction that appears when you first go to the website. We worked together to storyboard the Flash introduction and then different people worked on different sections. In addition, I made the 3R’s movie and worked with my other teammates to sponsor a waste-free lunch day at our school and then to create a web page about it.
Looking back, the most fun parts of making the website were creating both the canopy and the 3R’s movie. By making this website, I have learned a lot about what people can do to save the environment. I have also discovered so much about technology and computers!
Rosie
We worked wonderfully together for over six months to create our site. Meredith and I helped design the site since we love art. We made drawings on paper and then turned them into the page designs you see on our site. Jonah had a lot of creative ideas about the Flash introduction and just about everything else on the site.
My favorite part of working on this site was actually doing things in our school to help the environment, like holding a waste-free lunch day. We went running around our school, putting up waste-free lunch day signs, making presentations in front of the whole school about the 3R's, and taking pictures of people’s lunches for our Earth Buddies site. Sometimes we worked together on simple things like trying to figure out where Alonzo’s thumb-drive went. Those parts were all fun! We all had so much fun with the site and are hoping that all of our efforts will be enjoyed by students from around the world. Thank you for visiting our site!
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Diversity
Our international team represents many different perspectives and is very diverse. We represent two different geographical locations (USA and Singapore), and we also represent more than three different cultural groups.
Arun, being from Singapore, was able to share information from that part of the world.
He brought in information from Singapore and India on topics
like rainwater harvesting, biofuels, and endangered animals. He
collected information on these topics from experts, and used his
online survey to compare the habits of children in Wisconsin and
Singapore. Because Arun lives in a hot climate, and Wisconsin
gets cold in winter, we managed to put items in the survey that
apply to both types of climate.
Alonzo, who is a Hispanic American, added information about Mexico to our website. For example, he added sections to the Solar Energy page on solar "hot pots" and solar water distillers used in Mexico. He also wrote about Mexico's use of wind power.
The rest of our teammates brought an American point of view to our site. The Americans are from Swedish, German, Italian and other cultural backgrounds. By bringing in all of these points of view, we were able to include information that connects to people living around the world. In fact, on each one of the What's Up pages we included a section called "Around the Globe" to make sure we covered information from as many different countries as possible (not just our own). We wanted to make sure kids understood that the problems facing our earth are global. Earth's environmental problems have been created by almost every country, and they need to be solved by everyone working together.
Even though we represent different locations, cultural backgrounds, interests, and skills, we were united with the single goal of creating a website that would inspire kids to take action and make changes to save the environment.
Citations
Citations for individual web pages can be found at the bottom of each page. Listed below are additional resources that were used to create our website.
Please note that when this site was created all of the links worked. We are sorry if some of the links no longer work, because other websites may have changed their URL's.
