The Step-By-Step Guide explains important tasks, requirements, and deadlines that must be met in order for a team to successfully complete the ThinkQuest competition.
Competition Checklist
Please print this Checklist and use it to keep your team on track. While most teams successfully complete the competition and have the pleasure of seeing their hard work displayed in the ThinkQuest Library, some teams are unfortunately disqualified for reasons that can be avoided by following this Checklist.
Enroll: Enrollment opens on August 15, 2007 and closes on April 2, 2008
at 3:00 pm (Eastern Time).
Read the Rules and Code of Conduct. If any member of a team breaches the rules,
the entire team is disqualified from the competition.
Obtain authorization
from your principal, head teacher, or school administrator.
Any Team whose Lead Coach is not authorized by the Entry Submission Deadline risks disqualification.
Create your team. Ensure
that your team meets all the Team
Requirements in the Rules.
Create and upload your website: The Entry Submission
Deadline is April 2, 2008 at 3:00 pm (Eastern Time). Below are reminders to help teams avoid common mistakes that can result in disqualification.
Upload your site BEFORE the Entry Submission Deadline. The open competition phase lasts for eight months; not uploading your site, or final edits, until the last days before the Entry Submission Deadline is very risky. Unforeseen issues could mean your site is not uploaded in time, resulting lower scores in Judging or even disqualification. Teams that have not uploaded a site are disqualified.
Make sure you provide proper citations and obtain permission (when applicable) for all information and content, including but not limited to words, data, images, graphics, video and audio clips, and code. Plagiarism and copyright violation result in the vast majority of disqualifications.
Make sure your site does not contain any commercial advertising, or links to any site that contains commercial advertising or content that changes over time.
Make sure your site does not contain or link to a discussion board, guestbook, or any other tool that would enable students to post personal information.
Name your home page index.htm or index.html (all lowercase letters) and put it in the top level of your Team's site directory.
Use relative links and image references. Do not use absolute links, which may break when you upload your site.
Names of all files and directories must be in basic ASCII (Western characters) with no accents, special characters, or spaces.
Make sure all files can run within a browser. Server-based technologies such as PHP and Perl are not supported, so make sure the site does not use any technologies that are not permitted.
Make sure your files do not exceed the 50 megabytes of storage allotted to each team on the ThinkQuest server.
Upload all your website files to your Team's directory on the ThinkQuest server. Files and content cannot be hosted externally; ALL of your site must be hosted on the ThinkQuest server. No content components can be hosted on an external site (i.e. YouTube, games, video, etc.)
Test your website thoroughly and frequently using a variety of computers with different browsers.
Complete and Submit your Site Profile: The Entry Submission
Deadline is April 2, 2008 at 3:00 pm (Eastern Time).
Complete the Site Profile, a short questionnaire
about your project. Make sure that information is accurate (for example, all current team members are listed) and does not contain any prohibited content, such as students' last names or email addresses (see Rules).
A Site Profile must be completed for each Team in the competition. The Site Profile can only be completed by the Lead Coach for the Team.
Submit the Site Profile. Once the Site Profile is completed, the Lead Coach can submit the Site Profile, and with it, the Team's entry. By submitting the Site Profile you confirm that the Team's entry is complete and ready to be scored in the Judging phase of the Competition. Please note: Once the Site Profile is submitted, Teams can no longer edit their site files, so only submit the Site Profile when the Team's entry is ready.
The Site Profile is an integral part of your Team's entry for the Competition. Failure to complete and submit the Site Profile for your Team will result in disqualification.
Competition Results: Winners are announced on May 29, 2008.
Check that you have received Judging feedback via email (Coaches only).
Check that your site has been published in the ThinkQuest Library. Disqualified sites are not published.
Visit the ThinkQuest website to view a list of winning teams.