Team
SarahHome Schooled, NH, United States
HilaryUniversity of New England, Australia
KuniadiParahyangan Catholic University, Indonesia
JocelynTampines Junior College, Singapore
Age Range
19 & under
Coaches
Rianti HidayatIndonesia
Tina PhotakisCowandilla Primary School, South Australia, Australia
Category
History & Government > World History
Audience
Ages 15 and up
Language
English, Chinese
Site Features
Online Activity / Game
Quiz
Teacher Resources (Lesson Plans, Worksheets)
Video / Sound
Team Collaboration
Even though our team came from different parts of the world, like Australia,Indonesia,Singapore and America,we established a great team rapport.We found that our team had great talent and much to offer with the design of the website.We used this knowledge to work out roles and responsibilities.Sarah(USA)was our excellent web designer and was responsible for all aspects of the website.Her design gives an historical perspective with its imagery.Sarah also kept our morale going even though we were in different time zones.Hilary(Australia)is amazingly gifted in writing and was our sole content writer,which was a mammoth task!Her expertise with research ensured that the crucial areas of the topic were covered thoroughly and with amazing understanding She rose to the occasion and has presented a global array of Treaties.Jocelyn(Singapore)was incredible as our translator and a crucial team member.This is reflected in the quality of her Chinese translations. Adi (Indonesia)designed some great quizzes and games,without a fuss.His expertise with this aspect of the site was invaluable.We used Yahoo groups to post messages and upload articles,as well as email, FaceBook and Instant Messenger programs.This team has truly utilised 21st century tools to collaborate and to produce this unique website.Making time for regular team meetings in order to discuss major decisions and provide updates was very difficult because of the time differences as well as personal commitments, such as work and family activities.Regular access to the internet was a major problem for Rianti and Adi in Indonesia.Internet connectivity in Indonesia is unreliable and extremely expensive.They had to share the computer that they were using to correspond with the team.Rianti is also studying for a Master's degrees so this impeded the access time for Adi to complete his work for the website with having to share the computer usage.In order for Hilary and Jocelyn to participate they had to surrender their Summer Holidays,sacrificing holidays with the family and socialising with friends to complete the work and help keep the team moving forward.Language was also a barrier that we were able to overcome to create the website.English is not Adi,Jocelyn and Rianti's native language,however they did communicate with the team effectively.The team was unable to find a programmer in Flash or Javascript,which meant limited interactivity.After a team meeting and brainstorming we decided that the best way to combat this was to create some quizzes as PDF sheets to be used as teacher resources and games sheets.
Team Diversity
Our team is globally diverse and come from different backgrounds. Hilary's in Australia, Sarah's in United States, Jocelyn's in Singapore, and Adi's in Indonesia. Coaches Tina & Rianti are from Australia and Indonesia. We've learned so much about both ourselves and others' cultures. Every team member except Rianti and Adi have completed this website whilst in different timezones. Even Hilary and Tina, both in Australia, have 982 miles and 1 time zone between them. This made us heavily reliant on the individual's independent work, as well as communicating as a team. The team covers 4 countries, 4 timezones, 4 languages, 5 cultures and 2 hemispheres! Hilary, Sarah and Tina are English speakers, with Tina also fluent in Greek. Adi and Rianti are Indonesian speakers who got good English practice during this cycle. Jocelyn is a native Mandarin speaker who also speaks English. Australian, American, Indonesian, Singaporean and Greek cultures all influenced this team greatly. Our diversity helped our team members to be more understanding of things like appreciating background and that not everyone's a native English speaker. It made us ensure that all our team members understood their responsibilities to design and research content. All members worked together emailing each other with words of encouragement. This helped the team to work extremely well together. The use of free social networking tools helped us communication too. We were heavily reliant on communication as this was the key element to ensure that the team completed the website. Some of our team members had enormous workloads with other study, but once they committed to TQ, they managed to find a balance and they felt a sense of loyalty to each other to finish the site. In addition to heavy workloads, a couple of our members had to share a computer and the internet. It was not easy and quite frustrating. It all came together however and now we are pleased to present the finished product to you - a website dedicated to International treaties. We were extremely proud of the dedication of the site to 'Citizens of the World'. Young people are the future generation and we were determined to produce a website that they could use to learn more about International History and factors that affect our everyday lives. Our ThinkQuest journey has not been a smooth one however, we overcame the obstacles in our way and rose above it all. We believe that you will enjoy reading about the Treaties this site has covered in order to be inspired to make a difference in this world.
