Isabella: Found that Isabella, from a ThinkQuest team last year, was great at making links Was part of the decision making on the design of the site Made the banner and helped to write the song Was a researcher (Boring!) and report writer Went to the bank and to the Philadelphia Mint Was an enthusiastic team member Lillie: Found out that she works well as a team member. She offers her opinion but will accept it if the team votes differently Was part of the decision making on the design of the site Was a researcher and report writer even though she hated it Made quizzes and games Note-taker on trips.  Went to the bank and to the Philadelphia Mint Had a positive attitude and had a creative approach to website development Alix: Found out that she is a great artist--both in drawing and in computer graphics Was our team artist.  She learned a graphics program in order to make our 3-D graphics Was part of the design decision-making for the site Took a trip to the Bank of England Museum and reported on it Made the graphics for the money game Kelly: Found out she is creative and always had great ideas for the site Did research and reports (and hated every minute of it!) Helped design the money game Did definitions for money words Edited pages and cut and paste them from MS Word into the webpage Mickey: Found out he is a great photographer Researched (and hated it) but wrote amazing reports Worked on sizing graphics Made web games Edited pages

     When we started this project, we had a culturally diverse team. We had 4 team members from the United States, one from China and one from England.  While we had our language in common with our English team member, she surprised us with how she spelled words because they were different than in the U.S.  In the end, Alix seemed very much like us even though she was so far away.  Email is great and we had a wonderful time learning about our faraway team member and sharing ideas.
     As we look back on it, our very diversity split the team.  We had a very nice 10 year old girl from China on our team.  Everything started out well with her offering ideas for sites and then for site titles. She didn't speak English but we had a teacher in China who was helping us communicate.  When we sent an allowance survey for her to give her classmates, we were told that--in China--these things were not done.  That was interesting to us since we have the freedom to do these things. 
    The girl was given an assignment in October and she never completed it.  When we contacted her teacher, we found the reason why.  It seems that there is a lot of pressure on students in China to excel in school and in test taking.  She had no time to devote to this project because all of her time had to go into schooling.  We had come face to face with cultural differences that would affect the team and our ability to get assignments done.  With regret, she was removed from the team. 

Challenges:

    It seemed that this site challenged us at every turn.  Every idea and plan (for awhile) seemed to fail.  Here are some examples:
 

	We wanted to visit a bank and the Philadelphia Mint. Our coach began to make plans to visit our school's bank so that we could see how it worked and take pictures and videos. The bank said we couldn't take pictures or videos because of security issues. We had a problem. Then our coach went to her own bank and was REALLY lucky! That bank was closing down a branch and we would be able to take pictures of the vault and anything else we needed! Then she contacted the mint. Yes, security again was causing us problems. They wouldn't allow pictures or videos. Our coach contacted 3 different people from October to February before we were able to get permission to take pictures. The conditions were that we couldn't take pictures of the production floor on our guided tour by Mr. Grant. After we went, Mr. Grant was nice enough to take some pictures for us so things worked out in the end!
	The team sent letters to some of the most affluent people in the country. We figured that if they were rich, they had to handle their money well and might be willing to answer a couple questions about their jobs when they were young and advice they would give to young people.  No such luck. Out of 15 letters, we got two responses  to let us know that they were too busy to answer letters like this anymore.  It was disappointing because we thought advice from these people would be really cool for the site.
	We decided to sign up for Epals, a secure online community.  After having done that, we posted a question about allowances around the world. We read that allowances were given mostly in North America but we wanted to see if this was true.  We submitted a post and waited for answers. The post was deleted by Epals with no explanation. This happened 3 times until we found out that our profile wasn't complete.  By that time, it was too late to get the results we wanted.
	The team was working really hard on a Flash introduction. This is the first page of a website. The introduction was looking REALLY good and our song was half made when a student told us that he didn't like Flash introductions and left the page when there was one. This made us think: Were we making one because it makes the website better or just because it seems like everyone is doing it in ThinkQuest? We hadn't thought about what our AUDIENCE liked or disliked when it came to intros.  Since our audience is sixth grade to about eleventh grade, we figured that asking sixth graders might be a good idea. If anyone was going to like Flash intros, it would be the youngest kids who like things to move and jump on a website.  We explained what a Flash intro was, polled the whole sixth grade. These are the questions we asked: How many students love Flash intros and watch them? How many like them a little? How many dislike or hate them and click on 'skip' rather than watch them? How many hate them enough to leave the site if there is one? The results were unexpected with 25 out of 36 students saying that they hated them and skipped them if they were on the site.  The rest said they only liked them a little.  When we saw these results, we asked the classes if the intros were or were not worthwhile for a site.  Thirty five of the thirty six students said that Flash intros are not worthwhile!      We had to make a decision.  Should we throw away all of the time and work we put into an Flash introduction or should we choose to make the site reflect what our audience wanted?  Since the main goal, as our coach says, is to make the best site that we can--even if we don't win the competition--we chose to get rid of the Flash intro.  Alix made so many GREAT graphics for it that we were sorry that no one would see them.

We think that, in spite of these challenges, our site is going to help teens and soon-to-be teens manage their money better.  With the economy in worldwide recession, our future may depend on our knowing about responsible handling of money now.