NEWS

ThinkQuest Newsletter
November, 1998

Contents:

• Feature: ThinkQuest for Tomorrow's Teachers Announced
• Announcements
• ThinkQuest Teams in the News
• Technical Tips & Hints Special: PROMOTING YOUR ENTRY

• THINKQUEST FOR TOMORROW'S TEACHERS CHALLENGES COLLABORATIVE TEAMS TO BUILD

EXCEPTIONAL WEB-BASED EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS

ThinkQuest, a program created by Advanced Network & Services that supports education and science, announced the launch of its ThinkQuest for Tomorrow's Teachers initiative. Offering more that ,000 in prize money, ThinkQuest for Tomorrow's Teachers challenges teams of K-12 teachers, prospective teachers and college and university faculty to build content-rich and easy-to-implement Web-based educational materials for K-12 classrooms or teacher education programs. Full details can be found on the ThinkQuest Web site located at http://www.thinkquest.org.

Designed to help cultivate a generation of new teachers who are technology literate, Tomorrow's Teachers challenges current and future educators to mold their vision of how technology can be used in the classroom into outstanding educational materials. The initiative also promotes the effective use of technology as an everyday tool for students as they live and learn. Reflecting these goals, a team's educational materials should make learning exciting and contagious. In addition, they should be easily integrated into a classroom's curricula and include educational and supporting materials that can be used by ALL teachers, regardless of their familiarity with technology.

The Tomorrow's Teachers challenge requires students in colleges of education to partner with a school of education faculty member, a faculty member from a different area of expertise and one or more teachers currently in a K-12 classroom. The goals of the challenge are manifold:

- To bring together student teachers, faculty and teachers in the field to build high quality educational Web sites
- To instill in schools of education and their students the important role computers and the Internet will play in their future as teachers
- To create a collaborative environment where diverse groups of teachers and learners share and explore together

Please visit The ThinkQuest for Tomorrow's Teachers section of our web site for complete details, rules and press release:

www.thinkquest.org/tqtt/index.shtml

• Announcements:

As the 1998 ThinkQuest Awards Event Weekend and Educational Technology Summit in Los Angeles draw near, we want to share important information.

There will be an Open House on Monday, November 23, 1998 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. that is free and open to all who wish to attend. There are directions to the Universal City Hilton online at: www.thinkquest.org/tq/event_directions.html

Also, see the latest 1998 ThinkQuest Awards Event Schedule at:
www.thinkquest.org/tq/98event.html

THE FIRST ANNUAL THINKQUEST EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY SUMMIT
KIDS, TECHNOLOGY AND THE NEW MILLENIUM

There is still time to register for the ThinkQuest Summit. Leaders from the worlds of education and technology will discuss the impact of the Internet on learning, today and in the new millenium. Summit attendees will also have an opportunity to be guests at the spectacular ThinkQuest Awards Event. For details on presenters and sessions, and to register for this important event visit the Summit Web site at:
http://www.thinkquest.org/summit/index.htm

1998 FINALISTS ANNOUNCED!

http://www.thinkquest.org/library/98finalists.html

Congratulations to all of the 1998 ThinkQuest Teams. The sites are terrific! We look forward to seeing the 1998 Finalists in Los Angeles for the final round of judging and the Spectacular Awards Event!

THE 1999 APPLICATIONS FOR ALL CONTESTS ARE NOW ONLINE!

Links to the applications for all contests can be found at: http://www.thinkquest.org/apponline.html

The ThinkQuest Junior Library will be featured in the January Technology Section of Teaching K-8 Magazine. Please look for the article!

• ThinkQuest Teams in the News:

Designer Genes, Team 18258, has informed us of several honors they have received, including the Women Webmasters Award for Excellence. They have also been featured in Conemara Enterprises' Northern Ireland Newsletter and the National Family PC Fun Sunday Comic Strip.

Science Quest, ThinkQuest Junior Finalist site, was featured on home.microsoft.com as a Today's Link. Visit the site at: http://hyperion.advanced.org/3542/

"Stamp on Black History" (team 10320) has been selected by Family Computer Workshop as one of the Top 100 Web sites for kids and has been reviewed in The Parents' Pocket Guide to Kids & Computers. This Guide is a comprehensive roadmap to fun & education with kids & computers. It contains reviews of the Top 100 kids' software titles and the Top 100 kids'web sites, plus lots of basic information for parents on using the Web easily and safely. The Guide is available at Amazon.com and is coming soon to CompUSA and other local stores.

The Well Connected Educator has featured two articles written by Steve Feld on the project, "Why Is the Mona Lisa Smiling?", ThinkQuest 1997 entry #13681. Read the articles at: http://www.gsh.org/wce/articles.htm

The site was also featured by The National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan. See this and other links at: http://www.museoscienza.org/english/leonardo/

• Technical Tips and Hints Special Feature
  By Peter Bleickardt

PROMOTING YOUR ENTRY

Imagine a film production company that spent lots of money on a film, but never advertised it. That company could go out of business because of such low viewer attendance. That's why film companies often spend more money advertising a new movie than they spent on making it.

Just as a film production company wants people to come see its film, you want people to visit your new ThinkQuest Web site. After all, you didn't put all that hard work into it for nothing!

There are three great ways to advertise your site effectively and appropriately:

WEB SEARCH ENGINES AND DIRECTORIES

Getting listed on a resource like Yahoo! or others is the best way to drive a large amount of traffic to your site. Furthermore, it's not uncommon for a ThinkQuest Entry to get extra attention as a "Cool Site" from these resources which can tremendously increase your site's hits.

USENET NEWSGROUPS

Posting a brief and enticing advertisement to appropriate newsgroups can provide a temporary increase in hits. However, be warned that posting to inappropriate groups (better known as spamming) can have an opposite and very negative effect. For example, it would be appropriate for any ThinkQuest Team to advertise their Entry in "comp.infosystems.www.announce," a group established specifically for users to announce the release of new Web sites.

MAILING LISTS

Sending an email advertisement to an appropriate mailing list is a great way to interest people in your site, because many mailing lists have hundreds or even thousands of subscribed members. An appropriate mailing list for any ThinkQuest Team to advertise on is the Classroom Connect mailing list. For information about it, visit the Resource Station of their Web site at http://www.classroom.net/resource/.

For more information on the above three advertising techniques or for more information about promoting your Entry, visit Yahoo!'s category "How to Announce and Promote Your Site" at:

http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Announcement_Services/

The ThinkQuest Newsletter is edited by Sonia McSweeney

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