- A Bridge for Cultural Exchange
- Bitten by the Web Design Bug
- Student's Persistence Leads to Victory
- Forming Friendships Across Time Zones
- A Quest that Ends in Reward
- Teamwork Hatches Award-Winning Site
- Reflections from a First-Time Coach
- Raising Awareness of an Environmental Emergency
- Making a World of Difference in AIDS Education
- Don't Know Much About Biotechnology?
Don't Know Much About Biotechnology? High School Students Will Teach You
High school junior Ben Ranard from Great Falls, Virginia, is passionate about biology and technology, and it shows in his award-winning website, "Gattaga." Ben and his teammates designed the site to educate students about biotechnology—from the basics of carbohydrates to stem cell research and recombinant DNA—all through the imaginative lens of a futuristic company.
Chris Charnitski, Ben's Biology teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, was actually the one who stumbled onto the ThinkQuest website one night. Charnitski, who admittedly knows little about webpage design, volunteered to coach a team, hoping Ben would enter the competition. Ben wasted no time. He surfed the web that night, found the ThinkQuest site, and began strategizing how to assemble an award-winning team by bringing together students who excelled in writing, research, and design.
As he recruited team members, he discovered that most of his schoolmates didn't want to work over the summer. But Ben was able to recruit two friends whom he has known since third grade, Sharon Kiang and Sharif Nezar. He then rounded out the team with Jane Kim, Joel Shor, and Andrew Li. Andrew was an expert in HTML and became the team's primary web master. The team met a couple of times before school ended and agreed on a concept for their site, a "front" that would maintain a student audience's interest in order to teach them about biotechnology. They decided to create a futuristic company, which they named "Gattaga."
The team set an artificial deadline in August to complete the website ahead of the official submission deadline in September. However, when the team met over the summer, they discovered they wanted a product with more content. "We had just barely scratched the surface," Ben recalls. "We each ended up writing a lot more stuff leading up to the real due date. School had just started. We would get home from school, grab a snack, pretend to do homework and then work on our website until 2 or 3 am. Tired, we'd get up and do it again the next day. Weekends, we were at my house with three computers and laptops going. We were uploading, adding a glossary, a guided tour, and Macromedia Flash interactive content. We really cranked out the work those last three weeks. We had a good website before, but we wanted it to be more in-depth."
ThinkQuest proved to be a valuable experience in leadership for Ben. "We didn't have a teacher to tell us what to do and when. We were on our own. Working with other people, you need to encourage them. There was a lot of work to be done over the summer and we had to finish before the deadline," says Ranard.
In addition to researching and building the site, Ben spent hours online and on the phone, requesting copyright permission for photos. He spent more than 10 hours working with one company, trying to convince officials to let him use the photos as a way to educate students about biotechnology. "I talked to lots of people about their policy of not allowing pictures posted online. I even showed them how on a Google search their pictures were already available to anyone on the Internet. Finally, I resorted to smaller websites with pictures we could use in place of the ones we wanted," says Ranard. The day after the submission deadline, the company called to give copyright permission, but it was too late. "It was disappointing," says Ben.
Although Coach Charnitski doesn't know much about web design, he knows biology. He spent many sleepless nights, checking and rechecking content, reviewing the writing to ensure it sounded as if it were from one voice, and making sure that the students had understood the requirements and deadlines. "ThinkQuest is a wonderful contest. It's fantastic. The students are leading the project and learning so much. Even so, I spent tens of hours. The last thing I wanted to do was to let these hard-working students down," says Charnitski. "I was up at midnight emailing my team to ensure they had everything ready for the submission."
Ben was confident that the "Gattaga" team had submitted an impressive website. The question was: Would it win? Up early the day of winner announcements, Ranard checked before school. He checked 15 times between classes and before lunch, but still no results were posted. Back home at 5 pm, he finally saw the results. He was ecstatic, realizing only then that the prize was an all-expense paid trip to San Francisco, a place he has not visited before.
In addition, his younger brother, Daniel, was inspired to assemble his own team for the next ThinkQuest competition, earning Third Place for the "Future Transportation" website. Since the awards ceremonies for both competitions were held at the same time in September, Ben and Daniel traveled together to San Francisco with their parents to receive their awards.
For future ThinkQuest competitors, Ben advises: "Choose a topic you're really interested in. Get the work started early. Don't procrastinate. Set early deadlines, and as long as it's something you enjoy, the enthusiasm will show in the website."
Tell Us Your Story
Is ThinkQuest making a difference at your school? Click here and tell us about your experiences.