Team
AnuragWestville Boys' High School, South Africa
KumerenStar College, South Africa
ShikarWestville Boys' High School, South Africa
Age Range
15 & under
Coaches
Suri MoodleyWestville Boys High School, South Africa
Category
Science & Technology > Life Science > Ecology > Global Warming
Science & Technology > Life Science
Audience
All ages
Language
English
Site Features
Online Activity / Game
Quiz
Teacher Resources (Lesson Plans, Worksheets)
Photo Gallery
Video / Sound
Team Collaboration
The whole team never even managed to get together as the team was only together during the school term and not the holidays. Contact between Anurag and Kumeren occurred via email or by telephone. Anurag and Shikar could communicate with each other at school, although not as easily as one might expect as Anurag was a grade higher than Shikar and the only place for pupils from different grades to meet at break was the media centre or the computer lab.
After the initial phase of planning the design of the website all that really happened was that Anurag would tell the team member what topic to research and by when he would like it by. Anurag then took it home and put the information on the website as he was the only one that had extensive knowledge of coding webpages. This does not mean Anurag did not do researching. The workload was distributed so that the site was completed within time, although it took more work that what was anticipated. The site was created using Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 which made the task a lot easier than coding the entire site.
The coach was not consulted with during the design process and only helped with uploading files. Part of the reason is probably because Mrs. Moodley enrolled the team months ago when work had not even begun. She only found out that the site was being created a few days before the site was submitted.
Although the work was often tedious, the rewards and not wanting to let the team down provided enough motivation to get through it all.
Team Diversity
This website was created by three individuals: Anurag, Shikar and Kumeren. Anurag and Shikar both study at Westville Boys’ High while Kumeren originates from Star College. Both of these schools are in South Africa close to the coastal city of Durban. The coach was Mrs. Moodley, the IT and Mathematics teacher at Westville Boys’ High.
The composition of the team resulted in being peculiar as Anurag was the only member who actually knew everyone from the team as Shikar and Kumeren were not acquainted with each other. Anurag knew Kumeren from primary school and Shikar from high school. Although this was not the easiest arrangement, the team that was chosen was deemed to be a competent one with each member bringing different talents to the table. Anurag got the idea to enter the ThinkQuest from two years ago when the IT teacher suggested it to the class who were just learning HTML at the time. No one entered that year.
The project did not even start as a group effort as Anurag started it on his own after being bored during the long December holidays being spent in Botswana. Although Anurag completed the basic layout and topic of the site on his own, although he always had the intention of contacting the other team members to see if they were interested. The reason why he could not do this earlier was because he was in Botswana on holiday and the others were in South Africa.
Culturally, all the members of the team were similar as they were all essentially Indian, although Anurag was the only one who still maintained links to his country of origin. The others’ ancestors came to South Africa centuries ago while Anurag’s parents were born in India. The mother tongue of the group members was English while Anurag’s was Bengali which he can speak fluently.
Once Anurag told the other members of the group, the layout was reworked and the gritty work of researching began.
Although the team was separated for the most part, the common goal the spread the word about the climate crisis fuelled the team.
