About
HashThat! Can you keep That a secret? was conceptualized, decoded, and carefully crafted by an international team of students hailing from England, India, and the USA. David is from England, Jason, Namrita and Rajesh are from India, and Laura and Erika are from the USA. The two coaches, Jim and Kishore are from the USA and India respectively. In this section, we would like to share with you more about ourselves and how we went about developing this website. Along the way, we would also like to share with you what we learnt from this entire educational journey.
The team that lived ;)
Sometime in November 2007, Jason approached Kishore about taking part in ThinkQuest after hearing about Kishore’s previous experiences with ThinkQuest. Kishore had always been an active participant in ThinkQuest and was in fact looking forward to assistant coaching a team (since he had turned 20 and was hence ineligible to compete as a student member). Kishore suggested David and Namrita, since he had worked with them on past projects and both of them were happy to be a part of the team. When they realized they needed someone for developing interactive flash games, Jason knew that Rajesh was the man for the job! (As a matter of fact, Jason and Rajesh used to be called the “Binary Brothers”!) Kishore had difficulties in finding a suitable primary coach in India. When he contacted the people he knew overseas, all of them were tied up. Although he knew that Jim was already coaching another ThinkQuest team, he still approached him to see if he would be interested in coaching us. Jim agreed to help in the team management and paperwork, but could not involve himself completely due to his commitment with his other team. Jim brought in Laura for the Spanish translation of the site, with whom he had worked on a previous ThinkQuest team. To complete the picture, Laura brought in Erika to help her with the translation.
Crypto and us
Let us recount how the idea of doing a site on cryptography dawned on us. We wanted to do a site on a topic which is relevant in the world of today, on a global scale. In addition, we wanted to address a topic which holds a vast amount of importance in everyone’s life, yet is something that most people take for granted. When we stumbled upon cryptography, we knew that we had the right topic. And we soon found out, cryptography had an amazingly rich and diverse history. It has transformed and adapted itself to find its way into a plethora of applications today. Apart from its technological dimension, it also has a far-reaching socio-political impact. In spite of all this, most people conceive it as a purely technical topic. So, we wanted to highlight the practical relevance of cryptography in everyday life and present it in an engaging and light-hearted way.
To compliment this, we went in for an imaginative and appealing title which would catch the user’s attention immediately, but at the same time, represent the essence of what cryptography is all about – keeping valuable information a secret. And thus came about: HashThat! Can you keep That a secret?
Collaboration
In spite of living across different time zones, we always found ways to communicate and collaborate effectively. We had weekly chats to discuss how the team is progressing and to generally catch up with what each person was upto. We also ensured that everyone checked their email on a daily basis and acknowledged even if no particular response was required. This helped to keep team members well informed and responsive to what is happening around them. Effective email usage also meant that we kept our chat sessions highly focused. Even though email and chat were sufficient for most of the cases, sometimes we just could not get our ideas across in words. In such circumstances, we used Skype calls to clarify and discuss on ideas. In fact, most of the games on this site are the product of numerous Skype conversations! To learn more about the role of each member and how they worked, do read their individual profile pages!
Take-aways
Participating in ThinkQuest was an extremely exhilarating and stimulating experience for us. Here’s what we learnt along the way!
Cultural exchange
ThinkQuest offered us the opportunity to work with people from diverse social, cultural, religious and geographical backgrounds. Small talks about the lifestyles of each of our team members often made our chat sessions addictive! In the process, we were able to see the world through the eyes of each of our team members.
Joy of learning
It’s a general perception that learning is a mundane process. But as we worked on this project, we discovered the joy of learning, in particular learning together. There would be a great deal of excitement when one of the team members discovered even the smallest bit of information. The interviews were the most enriching experiences as we were given insight into the lives of three individuals and their diverse views on cryptography. They really helped broaden our understanding about every facet of cryptography.
Joy of sharing
With so much information at hand, we decided that we needed to present it in a meaningful and clear manner in order to enhance the user’s learning experience. At the same time, we wanted it to be light-hearted and fun! Thus, we started challenging ourselves to make learning an interactive experience, critiquing our site from various angles and viewpoints and trying to understand how people of different countries and age groups would perceive it. And so we incorporated everything from ‘do it yourself’ video clips to interviews to music. We wanted something for everyone on our site!
Evaluating and assimilating information
While we were working, we realized that not all the information available to us was 100% accurate. So we became conscious about the need to double check the accuracy and reliability of the information we presented, by referring to multiple sources. Google books and amazon.com helped us find books and journals which provided us quality content.