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Tristan What grade will you be entering this fall, Tristan? Fifth grade. I'm looking at your Web page, and I see that it is about spiders. How did you become interested in spiders? I did a report on them in fourth grade and turned it into a calendar, so that's the report on my page. When you say you turned it into a calendar, what do you mean? There are 12 paragraphs, and I used one paragraph for each month and drew a picture for each month. Was the calendar a school project? Yes. |
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What made you want to put this up on the Web? I don't know. I just wanted to have something on the Web to share with people. DId you know HTML when this all started? No. I learned it from my mom. Was it hard? Not too hard. How did she teach you? We used our HTML editor, so she showed me what all of the buttons did. How long did that take? I didn't learn it all at once. It didn't take too long because I didn't have too much complicated stuff on my Web page. |
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You have a counter. That's pretty complicated. Yes, but my mom put that on for me. And you have links, an e-mail form, and a spider web--does that move? The spider web by my header? Yes. The spider moves. That's some pretty complicated stuff. The spider is a GIF animation that we found from an Internet clipart Web site. |
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When you put this up, did you already have them in a word processing
program? Yes, because we had it saved because I had to type in my spider report to put in my calendar, so I had it saved as a document. Then we just changed it to an HTML document. How did you decide what should go on your page. I see a number of links. How did you find those? Mainly from a bunch of spider links from Mom's site, but not all of them. What are the stars? It says"Links to cool spider sites," and two of them have stars. Oh, those mean that those two are really good ones. What do you mean by really good? Why are those two really good? One of them is in Australia. That one has a whole bunch of links and it just had so much stuff you could learn. It also has lots of spider games like spider hangman and a spider memory game. And the other one, it just had a bunch of stuff that you could learn also. |
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Okay. Let's talk about your brother now. Do you work with Brennan much? Yes. What kind of work do you do with him? Sometimes I'll tell him something that might help with his page or let him know that something doesn't work. A lot of times, we play games on the computer. Also, if I have any trouble with it, like a system error or something, he'll help me. Do you like working with your brother? You feel comfortable going to him with questions? Yes. Sometimes he says funny things when he helps me. |
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Do you work with your mom much? On my Web page. I am also now helping my mom and my school's principal with my school's Web site. How did you first learn how to use computers and when was that? That was a long time ago, when we had an 8088. When you were really little, then. How young? Like two or three. What kind of things did you do? When I was little, the first game I ever played was a Donald Duck game. It was kind of strange. Well, it wasn't really strange. It was sort of fun, though. Also, Reader Rabbit was awesome. There was another pretty cool math game called Out-Numbered. |
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How did you continue to learn to use the computer? As I got older, I learned more complicated stuff. Mom, Dad and Brennan helped me. Recently, I also took a keyboarding class for a week for two hours a day. When you're using it, what other kinds of things do you do other than Web pages? Play games, like SimCity and SimTower and Magic School Bus, Oregon Trail and Yukon Trail. I use e-mail to send letters to people. Do you spend much time surfing? Not too much, but a little. When I do surf the Web, I surf sometimes for spiders, sometimes for other stuff. |
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Do you use computers at school? Not a lot, but sometimes. Probably the only time I use it at school is when I am looking up a book in the library. We might use them in the classroom this year. What are you interested in outside of Web pages? Writing and using some science kits at home, and playing with my friends. I like to build stuff with my Legos and to play with my rock collection. |
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Mom's Web site: The Need to Know Library Tristan and Brennan's mom has put up a site for educators and others, The Need to Know Library. According to the author, this site offers "Web resources for encyclopedic minds, K-12 students and educators, botanists, conservation biologists, and ecologists." It's certainly worth a visit! |
When you're older what do you think you'll be working on as an adult? Do
you have any ideas? No. Your page says that you're interested in invention, herpetology, and geology. What is herpetology? The study of reptiles. Do you have any reptiles? I'm taking care of a lizard right now, for about a year. She is a Tokay Gecko. Her name is Liz. How do you take care of a lizard? You feed her by giving her crickets. I put them in a bag and shake them up with a little calcium powder, and then we dump them in her cage, and then she eats them up. Do you look up anything about herpetology or lizards on the Web? Sometimes. Have you found anything good? Well I haven't, but I know Mom's certainly done that. So I visit some of the sites she has bookmarked. |
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Do you think when you're in high school you'll still be doing Web pages? Yes. Why? I don't know. Because they are fun and it makes me feel good to share information with other people. Visit Tristan's Web page on spiders. Go back to the interview with Brennan, Tristan's older brother. |
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