Thinkquest Team 19436
Interdisciplinary Section
Thinkquest 1998
Greetings, Judges,
Surely you would be interested in why we are writing this to you. After all, I'm sure that not many teams would bother to write a letter personally to the judges; maybe that's why we're so different and special. But why, you may ask, are we writing to you? No, it's not to bribe you or anything like that; we just thought that a few insights into our minds while we worked on this project would help you in your judging. I know that this letter may be a bit long, but I hope you will take the time to read it. Basically, there are three points to be covered here:
- Our thoughts on this project
- How we ensured that we did the right things
- What we did right
- What we did "not-so-right"
Our thoughts on this Project
This year is not the first that I have entered Thinkquest. Last year I entered Thinkquest with another team. Unfortunately, we received a very bad response from the judges, who evidently felt that the project was very badly done. And rightly so. It was from last year's experiences that I learnt many principles of developing a good webpage.
When the results came out it was quite a surprise - we scored last in all four criteria. Obviously I was quite disappointed; who wouldn't be? But I had the courage to look over my mistakes, find out what went wrong, and most importantly, find ways to correct them. So this year, when Thinkquest 98 came out, I decided to form a team with a friend of mine - Travis - he had never taken part in Thinkquest before, but he was willing to try it out. Before that I had gone through last year's entry (with another team) and I found a few factors that contributed to my "downfall", mainly:
- Team Cohesiveness and Stability
- International Cooperation
- Navigation and Customization
- Facilities for disabled users
- Inaccurate/Unclear Explanations
Of all these criteria, I felt that Team Cohesiveness, Navigation, and International Cooperation were the major factors in contributing to my demise. But what do I mean by this? Team Cohesiveness is basically whether the team can function as a productive group; whether members quarrel or argue; whether they can divide work fairly; whether they can work as a team.
International Cooperation is basically who your team members are; after all, Thinkquest aims at fostering cooperation over the Internet. Navigation includes navigational aids on your pages, feedback forms, Back to top buttons, and Site Maps - anything that helps the user to get around. Finally, Facilities for disabled users and Inaccurate explanations: these are pretty self-explanatory.
Question: So what did I do wrong last year?
The answer was simple. We:
- Were lacking in Team unity
Our Team Leader was an absolutely disgusting person - we simply could not get along with him. We only took him in because there was nobody else; furthermore, he made himself team leader without consent from us. Thus the members were in constant disagreement about certain issues; we could not work together and function as a productive team. In fact, I ended up doing most of the work - due to the immense strain; the work was slip-slop and careless although I managed to submit an entry.
- How did we fix it this time round
Well, I simply made sure that I could work with the person in question: Travis. Travis is a very good friend of mine. Also, we made clear at the start of the project that we would specialize in different subjects - he was to have all say in QBasic and programming; I would have all say in webpage creation and graphics. Thus quarrels were avoided and we ended up being happy and contented!
- Had disgustingly few navigational aids
Our Team Leader felt no need for this. Also, he insisted boorishly on a pictorial background and an awful colour scheme for the main page - it was hard to read the text there. There was no site map, no taskbar, no tables and other aids.
- How did we fix it this time round
I made sure there was a site map, taskbar and different buttons. Also, I put in a frame navigation system that was linked to the site map; read the Introduction for instructions. I made sure text could stand out against the black background too. Thus this time round I am confident of getting a higher score for navigation.
- International Cooperation
This, I must admit, is beyond my control. Somehow I feel it a little unfair - after all, you shouldn't get penalized just because you have team members from the same school or country. Maybe the weightage should be reduced. In my school, interested participants must choose a schoolmate as a team partner; thus we have not much choice in this.
- How did we fix it this time round
We didn't "fix" it. But when I heard about this ruling, I was determined not to let it get me down. So what if you lose 25% of your marks because your team members are from the same school? I was determined to make the page a success, that it would totally undermine the fact that we would not score too much for this section. The page would be so good that the judges wouldn't care about it.
(P.S. It may sound silly, but it didn't sound so silly then. . .)
The Big Difference (Maturity???)
Also, most importantly, last year, I thought that a good page was one that has all the fancy stuff like frames and whatnot. But now, I realise that Thinkquest is all about teaching through the Internet, and that you like good pages with good content, not a cheap cabaret show. Thus I decided not to incorporate Netscape Communicator 4 Tags, HTML 4 Tags, DirectX, Java or Frames in order to enlarge my viewing audience and cater to as large a web population as possible. Finally, for every "enhancement" (such as image-maps) we have, we have a text replacement for older browsers. So maybe you can say that we have matured intellectually!
This year, we set out to do Thinkquest again, this time on the subject of QBasic. There are a few points the team would like to highlight to the judges as they make their decision:
- Basically we are working with minimal resources; we used a plain ASCII editor to code this; no Frontpage or Hotdog was used. The graphics software we used for our images was the best we could accquire, Corel Photopaint V5. However, we did manage to accquire a 3D design software, mainly 3D Automax V2 from Autodesk. This software was used to create the cool swirling effect on our QB logo, the imagemap pictures and lots of other stuff. In fact, we revamped all our images after we got the software.
- Also, it would be unfair to penalise us for being too wordy; after all, this is a set of tutorials, and I see no way tutorials can avoid being wordy!
- Finally, we know that some of our main imagemap graphics are a little too large; we could have used text instead, but we felt that the best interface for this job was the imagemap, as it could convey much information without being too cluttered and wordy. That was some of the feedback given to us by some of our initial testers.
- P.S : Surely you aren't going to penalise us for creating really swell and cool graphics? That ain't fair! Ain't no webpage of mine's going around the net dressed up with cheap 2D images.
- P.P.S : Anyway not many folks are going round the net in a slow 14.4 modem, right?
- P.P.P.S : If you want quality you've gotta compromise with quantity. And vice versa. I prefer quality, thank you.
So, dearest judges, you now hold in your hands the fate of our 6 months of toil, effort and work. We hope you will judge it fairly and wisely, and take the above points into account. Finally, we thank you for your time.
Sincerely yours,
Louis
(P.S: In case you were wondering about Travis, he was too shy to talk to you; I added in his views with mine.)
So, you have heard our thoughts on Thinkquest. Now we would like to tell you what we did right, what we did that conformed to the guidelines, and (we must be honest here) what we didn't do so right.
What we did right
- We put in navigational aids that clearly stated where the user was, and a site map that made the whole page accessible through a simple (optional) frame system. This fufilled the guidelines on good navigation in the page.
- We put in scrolling "Mouseover" text that helped to explain what most links were.
- We tried to cut off Java and frames to enlarge our viewing audience; we only used 1 instance of Javascript, 1 instance of Frames, and a few imagemaps. In all cases the use of these enhancements would not affect the accesibility of the site in any way. Nor would it cut off any vital information or result in deprievement of certain material to the user. They are used for convinience, and we have a text alternative for the older browsers.
- We used the default font size for accessibility purposes. However, we found that our main image would not show very well on a 256 colour screen; this was due to the lens flare effect. However, it only applies to one graphic.
- We gave the users an opportunity to give feedback through e-mail.
- We tried to make the lessons simple and easy to understand by not only using text, but also adding charts and graphs to help.
- We made sure that there were Back to Top buttons on the page, as recommended.
- ALT tags and HEIGHT and WIDTH were added for IMG SRCs, along with BORDER.
- Graphics were customized and not copied from any source; also, quotes were added in a feeble attempt at humour.
- HR tags divided our lessons into clear and consistent sections.
- Hands-on practice instruction was provided by our Tutorial.
- We provided libraries and links for further learning; in other words, we aim to further their "education" even after our course.
- Finally, our HTML code is easy to read! And we didn't set a cool page font to make it easier to read the page.
What we did not-so-right (and why didn't we improve them!)
- The International Cooperation factor was dismal to us; but we couldn't do anything.
- We admit that some of our graphics may take some time to load on a 14.4 modem.
- Maybe we did use a bit too many image-maps, but I say they look cool.
- We also admit that the site map may take some time to load.
That concludes our piece, and we thank you for our time.
Email: lccorp1997@hotmail.com
We prefer a 24-bit True Color mode with 640x480 screen mode.
This Webpage created for Thinkquest 1998.