Six primary school learners from the Eastern Cape will be heading to San Francisco in the United States later this year to collect their prizes for winning the Think Quest Narrative competition, a web-based educational competition for learners from around the world.
The competition requires learners in teams of three to six children to design and build educational websites on an educational topic using the Think.com online project tools.
This year there were more than 1200 teams from across 26 countries that entered the competition, including more than 100 entries from South Africa, but it was the group of learners from Cotswold Preparatory in Port Elizabeth and from Stirling Primary in East London who won the Under-12 division.
The competition encourages learners to form teams across social, cultural and even international barriers and this was put to the test in the case of the winning group, which combines learners from schools more than 300 kilometres apart.
The end result was their competition entry entitled “Tour of a life time” from the Roaring of Exploring Touring Company.
Their project engaged them in plenty of research as well as interviewing and surveying their local communities of adults and children. Rather than drawing on secondary sources the team members interviewed local experts from their own communities, tour guides and eco-environmentalists. The team learned a range of valuable new skills during this process, while exposing the tourist attractions of their province to the rest of the world.
Both team coaches, Claire Dean and Brenda Hallowes are enthusiastic users of technology in teaching and learning.
Deane told the Teacher both team coaches have been involved with ICT training in the province for some time, so it was simply an extension of their regular work to guide the learners through the process of setting up the website.
“I always enjoy a challenge,” she explains.
“The kids are ecstatic and cannot wait to go to the US to collect their prizes.”
Each child and coach won a laptop and will be jetting off to San Francisco later this year on an all expenses paid trip to collect their prizes. In addition, each of the two schools will receive an award of $5000, roughly R40 000, courtesy of the sponsor, Oracle.
The winning website can be viewed at http://library.thinkquest.org/09jan-oracle-n-001/00218/page_463918921.html.