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Texas teens create their first Web site
Three boys taught themselves the basics in order to enter ThinkQuest. By Alicia M. Bartol SCR*TEC |
 magine a high
school cafeteria filled with students laughing and chatting, inhaling greasy fries and
chocolate milk, while finishing undone homework in a frenzy. In just such places,
ideas are born. At least that was the case for three young men from Conroe Independent
School District in Conroe, Texas.
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 French philosopher Vilfredo Pareto. 1848-1923. |
he students, Ayon, Animesh, and Jacob, were discussing
ways to fund their college years when Animesh mentioned ThinkQuest. Animesh
had visited the McCullough High School (now Woodlands High School) career center, where
he had learned about the competition.
Once Animesh described ThinkQuest to Ayon and Jacob, the three were eager to get started. Ayon says, "we were kind of tempted by the prize money, plus it seemed like a really neat thing to do." Since the boys needed to make the site educational, the first step was to find an appropriate subject for their site. Like typical teens, Ayon says, "we were discussing philosophy one day . . . and it just came to be our topic." At first, they weren't quite sure what to do; in fact, none of them had "ever gotten on the Internet . . . [or] ever programmed in HTML," the coding language that instructs Web browsers how to display a page. Starting from scratch, learning HTML was one of the first things they focused on. |
ike many students who do not have HTML or online publishing courses yet at their high
schools, the boys tackled HTML through books and online resources. Their school had
no connections to the Internet when they built their Thinkquest entry, so they had to
access the Internet from their home computers using Netscape. Ayon says, " I
bought a book on HTML . . . that Jacob and I mulled over. We found some resources . . .
that we could check out for a few days at a time. The frames was the only thing
neither of us could figure out for a while . . . Jacob finally found it on Netscape's
page."
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 Prussian philosopher Karl Marx.1818-1883. |
 oth students had
dabbled in programming languages at home, so they picked up HTML pretty fast once
they'd done a little studying. Ayon describes learning HTML as: "staring our
computers into submission," while they "looked at other sites' code to see what
part did what." They accessed the HTML code of other sites by viewing the "source"
through their Netscape browsers. After some work, the two were proficient enough in
HTML to begin creating a site. "Jacob and I were pretty intuitive about this whole
programming thing." says Ayon. "Not that I'm trying to brag, but it just came to
us." Other students of HTML have similar sentiments, noting that it's simpler than it
first appears. |
 ith Ayon and
Jacob well on their way to Web site production, Animesh delved into philosophy
research and site design. Ayon explains that "philosophy is an inherent interest
[with] debaters," so researching and organizing the site "made [Animesh] love it
even more." In fact, this is one of the goals of ThinkQuest, to bring education alive
for students through technology.
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 Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.1712-1778. |
o find information for their site, Animesh went through "books, books, and more
books," according to Ayon. They also used some periodicals, but the majority of
their data was historical in nature. There was so much data, in fact, that a main
hurdle was site organization. Animesh bounced ideas off the students' debate
teacher and ThinkQuest coach, Ken Ogden, to help come up with the current design. It
was important to the three boys that the site be easy to use, and not have anything
"hidden way back in the weird options," says Ayon. As always, the students
finalized it over lunch.
After a month, they succeeded in creating a user-friendly site that provides vivid descriptions of seven major philosophical eras, informative bibliographies of each era's primary thinkers, and paper and Internet resources for each. The site, Modern Political Philosophy , now resides in the Thinkquest library, along with many other impressive, student-made educational sites. |
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f you would like to
guide your students in the creation of a ThinkQuest entry, Ayon advises that
students start by learning HTML as soon as possible. He also suggests "getting a
fairly nice editor [such as] Frontpage," although he, Jacob, and Animesh did
fine using Netscape Gold. If they were to do this again, he and his friends would
"surf the net for a very long time just to get ideas." In fact, this is how many
professionals get inspiration for new designs. Finally, ThinkQuest provides
technological tips and useful tools to help students begin the Quest!
Read about two brothers who have participated in the ThinkQuest competition each of the last three years. |
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