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Rules
October 2004 Competition
*Rules were updated on April
1, 2005 where indicated below. |
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ThinkQuest challenges learners of all ages to create high quality, innovative,
and content-rich websites that are made freely available to
others via the internet at http://www.thinkquest.org.
Competition Overview
To complete the ThinkQuest competition, you must:
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Enroll, create your team, and obtain
authorization from your principal, head teacher, or school
administrator.
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Build, upload, and test your website.
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Submit the Site Profile, a short survey
about your project.
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Submit Peer Review scores and feedback
for other teams.
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Read your team's Peer Review feedback and make Final
Modifications to your website and Site Profile.
(Be sure to upload any edited website files and save any
changes to your Site Profile.)
-
Cross your fingers and wait, as the Judges
make their final decisions.
Click here for a printable checklist of the required
steps. |
Schedule
(Updated)
| Enrollment Opens |
October 4, 2004 |
| Website Upload Deadline |
March 15, 2005 3:00 pm
(Eastern Time) |
| Site Profile Deadline |
March 15, 2005 3:00 pm
(Eastern Time) |
| Peer Review Begins |
March 18, 2005 |
| Peer Review Deadline |
April 1, 2005 3:00 pm
(Eastern
Time) |
| Peer Review Feedback Distributed to Teams |
April 5, 2005 |
| Final Modifications Deadline |
April 27, 2005 3:00 pm
(Eastern Time) |
| Judging Begins |
April 28, 2005 (Updated) |
| Judging Ends |
May 24, 2005 3:00
pm
(Eastern Time) (Updated) |
| Winners Announced |
June 2, 2005 (Updated) |
ThinkQuest Staff may extend any competition deadline and
will post any changes on the ThinkQuest website. |
Divisions
For students, the minimum age to participate is 9 and the maximum
age to participate is 19. Teams choose to compete in one of
three age divisions:
- Age 12 and under
- Age 15 and under
- Age 19 and under
You can have a mixed team with older and younger students.
The oldest student in the team determines the division in which
the team may compete. Please use the Final Modifications Deadline
of April 27, 2005 to calculate official ages. |
Prizes
Winners:
Based on the relative merits of the website entries, the
Judges will select a 1st place award, 2nd place award, and
3rd place award in each of the three divisions (12 and under,
15 and under, 19 and under) along with an overall Best of
Category award for each competition category.
Each winning team member (students, Primary Coach, and Assistant
Coach) will be eligible to attend ThinkQuest Live, a prestigious
awards event. In addition, each student member is eligible
to bring a Chaperone (parent/legal guardian or an adult that
the parent/legal guardians have authorized to act as the student
member's Chaperone) to this event. This trip is valued at
approximately $4,000 USD per participant. Winners are responsible
for any applicable taxes.
Winning team members who win more than one award (e.g., 1st
place in division and Best of Category) will not
receive any prizes in addition to attendance at ThinkQuest
Live. Winning team members who are unable to attend ThinkQuest
Live will not receive a cash equivalent or other prize.
If a team's website is identified
as a prospective winner after Judging, a formal Winners Affidavit (Updated
June 2, 2005) will
be required to confirm each team member's identity.
Honorable Mentions:
Honorable Mention certificates may be awarded for outstanding
achievement. Selection of Honorable Mention sites will be
based on the relative merits of the website entries as scored
by the Judges. (Honorable Mention winners will not
be eligible to attend ThinkQuest Live.)
Winning websites and Honorable Mentions will be announced
on the ThinkQuest website on May 31, 2005. These websites
will also earn special recognition in the ThinkQuest Library. |
Team Requirements
Teams can have from 3 to 6 student members and up to 2 coaches
(one Primary Coach and one Assistant Coach).
- Each team must have one Primary
Coach.
- All of the students on a team
must be the correct age for their division as of the Final
Modifications Deadline.
- A team may have no more than two student members who have
been members of a winning ThinkQuest team in the past.
- Teams may be comprised of students and coaches from within
a single classroom, or students and coaches from different
classrooms, communities, and countries. Multi-location teams
and multi-language websites are encouraged.
- If information about a team member (i.e., personal identifiable
information) is found to be false or inaccurate, the team
will be disqualified.
Please see below for specifics on Coach and Student Requirements. |
Coach Requirements
Primary Coach
The Primary Coach must:
- be employed by an accredited public, private, or parochial
school.
- accept the Registration
Agreement.
- obtain a signed consent form from the parent/guardian
of each student member of the team (if required by local
law).
- must have an Authorized Person
validate the Primary Coach's school employment and accept
the Entry
Submission Agreement. (An Authorized Person is someone
who can legally bind the Primary Coach's school and/or sign
legal documents on behalf of the Primary Coach's school.)
- oversee the management of the Assistant Coach, ensuring
he/she is in compliance with the ThinkQuest Rules.
Assistant Coach
Assistant coaches may be employees of an accredited public,
private, or parochial school, parents, and/or subject matter
experts.
In addition, each Primary
or Assistant Coach...
- must act as the point of contact for the team;
- must have an active e-mail address;
- shall provide guidance, administration, and practical
assistance to their teams.
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Student Requirements
- Each student must be no younger than age 9 and no older
than age 19 as of the Final Modifications Deadline (April
27, 2005).
- Each student must attend an accredited public, private,
or parochial school. Homeschooled students may participate
so long as they are part of a team that is associated with
an accredited public, private, or parochial school (i.e.,
Primary Coach is an employee of an accredited public, private
or parochial school and other team members are affiliated
with an accredited school).
- Students are responsible for the actual design and development
of their website, including the selection, research, and
development of its content. Each student must make
significant contributions to the success of the team.
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Evaluation Criteria
Please review the Evaluation Criteria thoroughly before
developing your website. The criteria were developed
in coordination with the Buck Institute for Education,
Stanford
Center for Innovations in Learning, and Sara
Armstrong Consulting and will be used to evaluate all websites
entered in the competition. |
Topic Categories
For the October 2004 Competition, website topics must fit into
one of the following six competition categories:
Clothing
Communication
Money
Plants
Transportation
Open Category
To view examples of topics that fit into each category, click
on the individual links above. Please note that entries are
limited to the topic category only, not to
the specific topic examples. The examples are intended only
to spark your imagination! |
Website Requirements
The Website Upload Deadline (i.e., deadline to upload
websites to the ThinkQuest server) is March 15, 2005.
Teams that do not upload a website by this deadline will be
disqualified.
- Websites that have been entered into previous ThinkQuest
competitions are ineligible.
- Websites must be of educational value. (If the ThinkQuest
Staff deems the content of a website inappropriate from
an educational standpoint, the team will be disqualified).
- Websites must represent the original work of the student
team members and must not include plagiarism or copyright
violations.
- Websites must include citations for all information and
images used. Sources may be listed on each page or on a
separate bibliography page.
- Websites may not contain profanity, vulgar language, or
statements that promote hatred towards an individual, race,
or community.
- Websites may not contain any commercial advertising that
promotes the explicit sale of an item directly via the website.
- Websites may not report upon, or otherwise deal with,
(a) live vertebrate animal experimentation by the team or
(b) experiments that involve human subjects.
ThinkQuest is committed to ensuring the safety and privacy
of the many young people who create and use websites in the
ThinkQuest Library. To prevent students' personal information
from being posted in the Library, website content may not
contain any of the following:
- Student last names
- Student email addresses or personal contact information
(teacher or adult email addresses are acceptable)
- Guestbooks
- Discussion boards / forums / chat areas
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Languages
The website and Site Profile, as well as other communications
submitted to ThinkQuest, must be in English.
Translation of the website into multiple languages is acceptable.
Although website content may contain multiple languages,
file names and directories must be in basic ASCII
format (no accents or non-Western characters). |
Technical Requirements
Website content must be built to run with a browser:
- Browser-based technologies such as Flash, Java script,
dhtml, style sheets, and applets are supported.
- Server-based technologies such as PHP, Perl, SSI, Java,
and FrontPage extensions* are not supported.
*FrontPage can be used to design and build your website,
but FrontPage's server-side extensions and publishing utilities
are not supported.
Each team will be allowed to use no more than 50
mb of ThinkQuest server space for their website.
Websites that exceed the 50 mb limit will be disqualified.
Teams are encouraged to upload and test their files periodically
on the ThinkQuest server. All final website content must be
uploaded to the ThinkQuest server. Content
cannot be hosted on an external server.
Teams will have two methods for uploading files to the ThinkQuest
server: the ThinkQuest web-based file upload tool and WebDAV.
Both methods are fully explained in Help.
Teams will not be given SFTP or shell access.
A team will be disqualified if its members intentionally
or negligently gain unauthorized access to, or misuse, the
ThinkQuest website or server by gaining access to areas that
the team does not have the explicit right to use or for using
the server for purposes not related to the development and
deployment of the ThinkQuest competition. |
Site Profile
The Site Profile is a short survey about your project. The
Site Profile Deadline (i.e., deadline to submit the Site Profile
in the ThinkQuest system) is March 15, 2005. Teams
that do not submit a Site Profile by this deadline will be
disqualified.
This Site Profile will be viewed by your peers and Judges,
who will take the Profile's content into consideration as
they evaluate and score your entry. |
Peer Review
The purpose of Peer Review is to provide teams with feedback
from their fellow students and coaches and to give teams the
opportunity to make final modifications to their website and
Site Profile based on that feedback.
Peer Review begins on March 18, 2005. Each team will be required
to review a minimum of three websites created by teams within
their age division. Teams that do not submit
Peer Review scores by the Peer Review Deadline (April 1, 2005)
will be disqualified. |
Final Modifications
Peer Review feedback will be distributed to teams on April
5, 2005. Teams then have the option to make additional edits
to their websites and Site Profiles before the Final Modifications
Deadline (April 27, 2005). Be sure to upload any edited website
files and save any changes to your Site Profile.
After the Final Modifications Deadline, teams will
no longer have access to their ThinkQuest server space or
Site Profile. |
Judging
A panel of Judges will select the winners of the October 2004
Competition.
The Judges will be selected and recruited by ThinkQuest Staff
and ThinkQuest Partners. Judges are required to have a minimum
of 5 years experience in the general field of education OR
must be currently employed as a teacher. Individuals who are
coaching teams enrolled in the current competition cannot
participate as Judges.
Each decision of the ThinkQuest Staff and each decision of
any of the ThinkQuest Judges, shall, in all respects, be final,
binding, and shall not be subject to review.
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Library
All qualified websites from the October 2004 Competition
will be added to the ThinkQuest
Library as public websites on the internet for a minimum
of one year. Winning websites are displayed prominently
in the Library and will remain online longer. Coaches
of teams whose websites qualify to enter the ThinkQuest Library
will be notified via email. |
Oracle
Education Foundation
ThinkQuest is a program of the Oracle Education Foundation.
Please visit http://www.oraclefoundation.org
for more information. |
| A team may be disqualified at
any point during the October 2004 Competition if
there is a violation of any portion of these Rules, Registration Agreement,
Entry Submission Agreement,
or Winners Affidavit (Updated
June 2, 2005).
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