Serendipity35

I was writing in the last entry about schools blocking content. I did come across one alternative.

Think.com

It is described as an online community for learning. It takes the idea that learning is a social phenomenon and that students are often motivated to write for a global online audience rather than an audience of one teacher who is giving a grade, and it gives them a "safe place." Only students and teachers from member schools can enter this password-protected learning community. They can use websites and interactive tools to publish ideas and collaborate on projects.

I can't play with it since I'm at a university and the member schools are secondary schools, so perhaps some Think.com users may come across this entry and post a comment about their experiences.

I can tell you something about ThinkQuest which comes from the same folks. ThinkQuest is students thinking and learning together in teams to create quality educational websites - and compete for prizes, including a trip to ThinkQuest Live. It's project-based learning and really encourages students (and teacher coaches) to work with others around the world.

Both Thinkquest and Think.com are now sponsored by the Oracle Education Foundation and the websites are available in the ThinkQuest Library which is a great resource of 5,500 plus sites created by students for students. Search the library.

I know something about ThinQuest because in my secondary school teaching years I coached a bunch of teams. I actually learned a lot about the Net, web design, and teaching technology to kids from those experiences.

I even lucked into coaching a winning team in the senior division back in 1998 that created a site about the movie industry and moviemaking. You can see the archived site in the TQ library at http://library.thinkquest.org//10015/ I also coached a winning team in the junior division (which was then called ThinkQuest Jr.)

That site's team included my son as a member. He wanted to enter the competition after seeing me coach a team (and win) and he enlisted the help of a teacher in his school to coach. I signed on with some students in my school (also in NJ) and we added a student from California and his teacher that we only met through the TQ site and only collaborated with online.

That site is "Endangered New Jersey." It's a site about the threatened and endangered species of New Jersey. It's still on their server in its original version but unfortunately it can no longer be updated there, so it is also uploaded in an updated version on my NJIT server.

It's all about young people working together, sharing their knowledge, developing project, teamwork and technology skills. More than 30,000 students worldwide have competed since 1996.

On June 21 the latest winning teams will be announced and then August 15th the ThinkQuest International 2007 Competition will open.

Interested? A team is three to six student members (ages 9-19) and one Primary Coach and an optional Assistant Coach. Coaches are not supposed to work directly on the site at all. You are truly a guide on the side.

Get more information at Thinkquest.org