Team
DavidHome Schooled, NH, United States
CharlotteLondonderry High School, NH, United States
HannahHome Schooled, NY, United States
AbhiramKendriya Vidyalaya, Wellington Tamil Nadu, India
TelishaCowandilla Primary School, Australia
RonaldHome Schooled, PA, United States
Age Range
15 & under
Coaches
Mary WinchellNH, United States
Tina PhotakisCowandilla Primary School, South Australia, Australia
Category
Social Sciences & Culture > Languages & Language Arts
Audience
Ages 12 and up
Language
English
Site Features
Online Activity / Game
Quiz
Teacher Resources (Lesson Plans, Worksheets)
Video / Sound
Team Collaboration
Hola, Shalom,Yasou..“Team work is the fuel that allows common people to achieve uncommon results.” That was the motto for our team.Our team project is called Languages Wanted:Dead or Alive.We are a group of 6 students and 2 coaches who now have become well acquainted with the problem of disappearing languages.One student was aware of this problem and saw the potential for a great TQ website.She was right!Our team embraced the topic with great vigor and enthusiasm;what you see is the result!
Four students from America,1 from India and 1 Aboriginal student from Australia made up this incredible team.Each team member filled a spot on the team what was integral to its whole success. We had a 14 year old girl who agreed to be our “Flash Expert”, even though she didn’t know what flash was. She made the Flash game for our site with some instruction from a kind teacher.We also had a very talented young artist who made some amazing original artwork for our site.Our 13 year old student from India surprised us all with his exceptional poetic ability. He wrote 2 poignant poems that perfectly express the heart and soul of our website. He stated, “I enjoyed working as a team and the experience was thrilling.”Our youngest student, who is 12 and is an Aboriginal Australian, really stretched her abilities as she was filmed interviewing a linguistic expert. She is very proud to have been given this opportunity and to have excelled at her achievement.Her teachers and school mates are eagerly awaiting the finished product as are the rest of our team members.Being a part of this team greatly boosted her self esteem.
A great example of collaboration was that we decided in one of our early meetings to have the caveman story to explain how language may have developed.One team member wrote the story, it was then sent to our artist who illustrated it,another student wrote the essay,and our webmaster broke the drawings up into different panels to place them in the appropriate places on the page. We met on-line on Yahoo IM conference for our weekly meetings and used a PB wiki for communication.We also used the Wiki for brainstorming ideas and as a place to put references that others could use when we found them.Each early meeting was a brainstorming session of the direction the students wanted the site to go in.Our students were also very versatile as they did some writing and researching while we were waiting for the software to arrive.We think that we have achieved the uncommon results that we wanted.We have been very privileged to work with this great team.Thanks Oracle.
Team Diversity
We are a group of students and coaches who speak or read the following languages.8- English,4- Latin,4- Indian dialects,1- Pitjantjatjara,1-Narrindjeri,1- Greek,1- Indonesian,3-Spanish,2-French,1 Hebrew.Does this mean we have 26 people on our team—Not at all.We have 8.Our backgrounds are as varied as our languages.Our Indian student Abhiram lives in a large city where he has internet access,but travels back to his father’s home village every 4 to 6 weeks where there is no internet.He would have to miss our meetings on those occasions.He is probably the most enthusiastic student we have ever seen.He would say that he didn’t know if he could meet our deadlines because of exams,but he always did.Not only that, he was willing to get up at 5:30 AM to attend our meetings.Our other students were impressed that he knows 5 languages.Not only that, he became a real poet during this time producing 2 beautiful poems that were inspired by his work on the website.
One student,Telisha,is an Aboriginal Australian,and did not have internet access at all.As Coaches,we felt that it was more important to have an eager student like her on the team and not be as concerned that she could not attend the meetings.We were all very sad we could not meet with her, but she interfaced with Coach Tina who told us about her and kept us and her up to date with the team happenings.
We also had 3 home schooled students on our team who really appreciated the opportunity to be on a team project like this. They do not normally have the chance to do collaborative project work with other students.They were very eager and excited to be invited to participate on an international website team.They were able to stretch themselves as well. Team member Hannah did a telephone interview with a program coordinator at the Potawatomi Language Center.She wrote the questions,called her,did a great interview and all on her own.Team member David,another home schooled student,had never done a Flash website before and wanted to do one this year to expand his website design skills. Our sources were books, the internet,online newspaper articles,more scholarly publications,encyclopedias,and two interviews with experts. Because we had Telisha on our team who was interested in languages,we were able to interview the Language expert from Australia.
Participating in TQ has already changed the lives of our students especially the ones from a lower socio economic background.They managed to overcome huge obstacles to reach beyond themselves and enhance our website.As coaches we were thrilled to see the results.
