About the Team

Team Members:

• Greg - Team Captain
• Pierre - Lead Programmer
• Yann - Lead Researcher
• Erwan - Graphic Designer/Translator
• Shen Hao - Template Designer
• Gi Soong Chee - Assistant Coach
• Hortense Morales - Primary Coach

Greg - Team Captain

Hi. My name is Greg and I’m a tenth grade student at the French American School of New York (FASNY). I am French, and I moved to New York 4 years ago with my family because of my father’s job. Before that, I lived in France near Paris for about ten years. Moving to a new country was a great experience for me, and allowed me to learn about a new culture and a new language. In fact, English is a very useful in the world, and speaking a second language will be a great asset for me when I’ll move back to France. My hobbies, beside school and homework, are mainly playing sports like soccer, basketball, tennis, and rugby. I also enjoy video games.

 

I got enrolled in the Thinkquest competition at the beginning of the year because of Mrs. Morales, our computer teacher. As a former French student, I didn’t know a lot about computers and programmations, and I thought that taking part in the Thinkquest competition would be a great chance to learn about it. However, I brought my managing skills to the team, and helped with researching, editing stuff, and finalizing the website. Finally, I just want to say that smoking is an important topic for us, and learning about its effects was a useful experience.

 

Pierre - Lead Programmer

Hi, my name is Pierre and I have been living in the United States for twelve years. I was born and lived in France before coming to the states. I am completely bilingual.. Since first grade, I have followed a bilingual education at the French American School of New York. My points of interests have always been very broad. I play various sports including tennis and basketball. I am also a certified scuba diver. Since I was very young, I have always loved movies and especially music. I am open to every genre of music and I dj for my school’s dances and other dance parties for young kids and teens. I have also always been very interested in technology and especially computers. I love helping people with their computer problems, and therefore offer technical support & computer repair to my community. Besides technical support, I also specialized in video, photo & music editing.

 

This year, I was introduced to the ThinkQuest competition by my Computer Science teacher, Ms. Morales. I was very exited because this looked like a very interesting and challenging group project. This competition allowed me to finally get started in html, JavaScript and css coding. I was immediately fascinated by the art of website design. In the past 7 months I’ve learned a lot and was able to create another website besides the one for the competition. The ThinkQuest competition was a great experience that taught me a lot. I learned how to work in a group and respect others opinion about everything including the website design which we debated a lot on. Working with Mr. Gi and Shen Hao, who live in Singapor,e was also very interesting and challenging. Eventhough there is a 12 hour difference between Singapore and New York and that we have never met, we were able to communicate without any problems, thanks to the Google Group we created and Windows Live Messenger. I hope I will one day be able to meet both of them!

 

This competition also allowed me to learn a lot about the effects of tobacco on smokers and their surroundings. This has helped me reinforce my promise to never smoke and to encourage smokers to stop. Even though some moments of the project were harsh and very tiring, I will never forget all the good times. I would like to personally thank ThinkQuest for this fabulous competition they organize every year, as well as all the team members whom which it was a pleasure to work with.

 

Yann - Lead Researcher

Hello, my name is Yann. I currently live in New York and come from a bilingual Irish-French background. I therefore hold the French and Irish nationalities... I have lived in many countries throughout my life like England, France, Japan, and the United States. I also play many sports like rugby, soccer, basketball and ski. I have many interests including computers and electronics.

 

I decided to join this Thinkquest competition in order to learn about the world of computer and website programming like Adobe Flash or JavaScript… In our ThinkQuest team, I took care of the research and content of the site. During this period, the team encountered many challenges like deciding on the final banner, the color scheme and other various problems, but at the end, we were able to overcome them and are very satisfied with the final result.

 

Erwan - Graphic Designer

I am 15 years old and my name is Erwan. I’m in tenth grade and came to the U.S four years ago. I was born in Japan and moved to France when I was two years old. My parents are originally from France. I stayed in France for about eight years. I have great skills in art which I shared during the ThinkQuest competition through Adobe Flash and other interactive programs.

 

I chose to join this comptetition because I think it is really creative, which I really like, and because I love computers. The reason why I love computers is because it is an activity where the strength doesn’t make you win but your intelligence and originality. I play a lot of computer games during my free time after I finish my homework. I really like sports. I play a lot of tennis with Greg, some rock climbing, rugby at school. I am the graphic designer and translator of the team and I really enjoyed the competition.

 

Shen Hao - Template Designer

Hi! My name is Shen Hao and I am currently studying in Dunman High School in Singapore at 8th Grade. I am a Chinese and I speak British English and Mandarin. I started learning Japanese as my third language a year ago so I also converse in basic Japanese. Since primary school, I developed a passion on computers, not on the usual games that many teens fancy, but to construct new things and ideas. I had this ambitious dream that one day, people would use programs that I made as part of their daily lives.

 

When my CCA teacher cum mentor, Mr Gi, informed us about this website competition called ThinkQuest, where people from all over the world participate in, I felt very excited and wanted to start working on it right away. I was even more motivated when he informed me that I would be working with students from all the way the US as this is my first time taking part in such a large scale and global competition and also my first experience of collaborating with people whom I had never met before.

 

My main role in the team, together with Pierre, was to write the HTML, CSS and Javascript codes for our website. The main challenge for me was to create a layout that would work on all platforms and browsers and to decide on the colour scheme to be used. Although I do not really have a good colour sense, everything still worked out fine afterall!

 

Overall, the experience was quite an enriching one, having sharpen up my web designing skills, and I do hope that our efforts would pay off in the end!

 

Soong Chee Gi - Assistant Coach

Good morning! I am a Computing teacher from Dunman High School, Singapore. This is my first venture with a 15 and under team in ThinkQuest and I am greatly impressed by the discipline and hard work of the students from the French-American School of New York. Despite English not being their native tongue, the team showed excellent attitude and resolve in overcoming the language barrier and technical obstacles. It was challenging communicating with members with a 12-hour time zone difference and we communicated mostly asynchronously using Google Groups due to our various different schedules. The students have worked determinedly and consistently to produce a well-researched and designed site under the good guidance of Ms Hortense. It was also interesting to see some issues from a different perspective from the other end of the globe, even though we do share similar views and values as well.

 

This is certainly an important topic as we advocate the message of a smoke-free lifestyle and culture, not only for health reasons, but also in the larger context of environmental consciousness. I have truly benefited from the exchange and am confident that such desirable qualities will bring the boys far in their future pursuits in life. All the best to the team for the competition and at the end of every ThinkQuest journey, it is really the experience which matters far more than the results.

 

Hortense Morales - Primary Coach

Hello. My name is Hortense Morales. I am an alumnus of the French American School of New York where I currently teach the 6th through 10th grade computer science curriculum.

 

I have a long history with computer programming: I started working with developing websites when I was 14, around when my father solicited me to work with him on his company website. I learned DreamWeaver, Photoshop and other web development software programs on my own. I decided to pursue my undergraduate degree in Computer Inforamtion Systems. During that time, I learned programming languages, database languages, and networking. I finished my Master’s degree in Educational Technology last summer.

I learned about the ThinkQuest Competition last year and entered the competition with my 10th grade students. We won the ThinkQuest 2007 competition and attended ThinkQuest Live in November 2008. There, we all met several different people from around the world who had also won the competition. It is there that I met Mr. Gi and collaborated with him to create the team for this year’s competition.

For this year, I decided to start the competition off early in October. I spoke to my current 10th grade students about the competition and we got started.

I am extremely happy with the effort and work the team has put through. Each member gave it his best and used his skills to his advantage. I was surprised that, while I gave them little tips here and there, they basically micromanaged themselves like young adults. On the whole, I am very proud of the work they provided and the result of their labor. A lot of time went into this, but it was worth it!