In quest for kid power -- Oracle ThinkQuest

SAN FRANCISCO: Eleven-year-old Nikhil is just like any other kid of his age. He reads Harry Potter, loves the Tintin and Asterix comics and would like to listen to Indian folk tales, though expectedly he has never heard of the Amar Chitra Kathas.

It is however an Indian folk tale, one involving the comedies of Akbar and Birbal, that has enabled this resident of Baner in Pune and a student of the Mercedes Benz International School to do something very few kids of his age could just dream of.

He wrote an Akbar Birbal story (the one about a Missing Necklace) and that has won him a laptop worth $1000, his school an Honorable Global mention and most importantly young Nikhil a trip to San Francisco along with his mom.

All thanks to the ThinkQuest International 2007 competition sponsored by the Oracle Education Foundation, one that offers a unique project-based learning experience to students and teachers across the globe.

Started in 1996, this annual competition has seen more than 30,000 students worldwide, in the age group between 9-19, participating till date.

Students form a team and recruit a teacher to act as coach. Once the coach enrolls the team, students work together to create an innovative website on any topic within a broad range of educational categories. Diverse teams and globally relevant themes are encouraged.

The top five teams in each age division receive laptop computers and a cash award for the coach's school. In addition, the top three teams in each age division travel to ThinkQuest Live. Every completed website is published in the ThinkQuest Library. The idea is to inspire students to think, connect, create, and share.

Like little Nikhil was part of a team that involved kids from Australia and Japan as well as the UK; even the UK students came from multi-racial backgrounds like Iraq and Jamaica among others. Their project was called ‘Global Tales’, an animated website involving folk tales from different cultures—maybe the best product that could come out of this cultural potpourri.

How was the process and selection done? Says Nikhil: “My school teacher told us about the competition and asked us to write folk tales. Mine was a one-page story and selected among the best three from my school.” His teacher Glynnis Bebb sent all three to Kelly Rayon, the primary coach of the team in the Inner London, school who in consultation with the other students selected Nikhil’s work.

After that the team involving Nikhil, Mohammed, Ella, Jameka and Yusuke worked on the project for about two months with equitable distribution of work and quite unexpectedly it brought them the third prize in the under-12 category.

“As the coach my role was to guide; the hard work was done by these students, some of whom worked after school and on holidays to finish the work,” Says Kelly Rayon.

Heeral Desai, a freelance Web designer from Mumbai, who was the assistant coach for the team that won the first prize in the under-12 category too would like to credit her team for all the work. Her team had Shruthi from India besides other kids like Dylan, Courtney, Simran, George and Facundo from varied backgrounds like the US, Tunisia, Australia and Argentina. Their project “Living on the Brink” focuses on creating awareness about endangered species.

At the end of the day, what do these kids gain out of this? The global exposure and the US trip (desirable as many kids are from impoverished Third World countries) itself is incentive enough. Like the winner from India last year (she unfortunately passed away) didn’t even have access to a computer and had to go to her uncle’s place to work.

As part of their prize, the students will take part in a series of learning and recreational programs and be guests-of-honor at an awards banquet, where they will be honored by the Foundation's Board of Directors and Oracle executives.

But as Elizabeth Chase from Oracle informs, the company also keeps in touch with past winners and in many cases gives them opportunity to work as interns. Clare Dolan, vice president, Oracle Education Initiatives, said, "At the end of the competition, the students have not only created learning resources for their peers throughout the world, they have also developed critical life skills.”

For a company more known for its brash CEO and its hostile takeovers, ThinkQuest is indeed a nice humane initiative from Oracle.