NEWS

ThinkQuest Newsletter
February, 1999

Contents:

• Feature Story: Hypernews and Chat Go Live!
• Technical Tips - By Aaron Schlesinger
• Announcements
• ThinkQuest in the News
• Teams in the News

• Feature Story

Did you know that on January 11th, Hypernews and Chat went live on the ThinkQuest web site? Created as forums where people can interact and exchange ideas on different topics, Hypernews was developed in bulletin board format while Chat lets participants converse in real-time with each other and ThinkQuest staff members.

For those of you who would like to participate in Chat, we have scheduled several regularly staff-moderated chat times. They are:
Tuesdays at 10:00 AM
Wednesdays at 4:00 PM
Wednesdays at 9:00 PM
Thursdays at 10:30 AM
Thursdays at 4:00 PM

In addition, Chat will feature guest speakers who will talk for one hour on special topics of interest. Kathy Trahey inaugurated the guest speaker chat on the first day when she spoke about Careers in Computing.

Our next Chat guest speaker will be Peter Bleickardt, a former ThinkQuest First Place Award Winner, who will be on-line to discuss technical issues.

Please join us on March 2, 1999, at 5:00 PM.

Just where is this CHAT area? How do I get there? Go to http://chat.thinkquest.org/chatclient/chat.html

• Technical Tips - By Aaron Schlesinger

Surveys and other Gathered Information.

Have you been thinking about gathering information from your users? Want to conduct a survey?

Many people like to integrate their visitor's reactions into their website.
The question is "How do I do this?" It involves three steps; obtaining the information, storing it, and figuring out how to use it. One way to accomplish this task is to use both PHP3, a Pre Hypertext Processor, and MySQL, a database server, to form a highly interactive web site. With PHP you can have your site receive dynamic uploads and store information, such as quiz answers, into a database for later use. To find out more information regarding these programs, visit http://www.devshed.com/resource/advanced/php3/intro/,
an outside tutorial we highly recommend. If you'd like to fit it into your web site, write to ThinkQuest help at http://www.thinkquest.org/help/helpdesk.html to request a database for your team!

• Announcements

Women.com Adds Award-winning ThinkQuest Jr. Web Sites ThinkQuest Jr. is now being featured on the Women.com Crayola Family Play website. Women.com is one of several sites that will be "partnering" with ThinkQuest in the coming months. Please take a look! Follow the "ThinkQuest" logo link from the following URL:
http://www.familyplay.com/

Looking To Form a Team? Need a teammate?

There are currently 667 people looking for teams and we've made it even easier for you to search for teammates:
1. Post a message to HyperNews.
2. Use our Teammaker resource.

Good luck to everyone!

Deadline Reminders...

The ThinkQuest Jr. entry deadline has been extended to March 31, 1999.
March 31, 1999 is also the application deadline for both the ThinkQuest Internet Challenge and Tomorrow's Teachers programs.

• ThinkQuest in the News

The ThinkQuest and ThinkQuest Jr. programs were awarded Curriculum Administrator's Platinum Award for making the "greatest contributions in advancing online education." Over 500 sites were evaluated and only three Platinum Awards given out.

eSchool News just came out with their first Annual Impact 30, "a small band of high-impact players that have had a powerful effect on technology in the nation's schools." Allan Weis, creator of the ThinkQuest programs, was selected as one of the Impact 30, under the category of "activist and community leader."

• Teams in the News

Congratulations to the "Why is the Mona Lisa Smiling?" website. The site has garnered 11 additional distinctions for their site including:

The Boston Science Museum features our project in the Exploring Leonardo Exhibit:
http://www.mos.org/sln/Leonardo/Hotlist.html

The Children's Commission of Queensland, which links 400,000 schools in Australia:
http://www.childcomm.qld.gov.au/

Community Learning Network Canada - Network Nuggets:
http://www.cln.org/lists/nuggets/art_mus.html

and Site of the Month on Educate the Children in England:
http://www.merseyworld.com/educate/links.htm

The ThinkQuest Newsletter is edited by Sonia McSweeney

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