Team
EllaPrince Henry's High School,, England, United Kingdom
AmyPrince Henry's High School,, England, United Kingdom
AlexPrince Henry's High School,, England, United Kingdom
ShantiPrince Henry's High School,, England, United Kingdom
HollyPrince Henry's High School,, England, United Kingdom
Age Range
15 & under
Coaches
M BrantPrince Henry's High School,, England, United Kingdom
Category
Philosophy, Religion & Mythology > Witchcraft
Audience
All ages
Language
English
Team Collaboration
Our team, made up of myself Shanti, Ella, Holly, Amy & Alex have known each other since the age of ten, Ella, Holly & I having been best friends since the age of 6. Because of this we're an extremely close-knit group and our experience on this project and other similar competitions in the past have helped us strengthen this bond and know what we need to do to work together effectively.
Needless to say, that does not mean we worked together always smoothly. Diversity in a team result in clashes of its members – particularly in our case of a girl called Gemma, who left towards the beginning following clashes with the stronger personalities in our group about the amount of work she was willing to contribute. Despite this, she left feeling it was the right decision for her personally and we are still all close friends. Also throughout the making of our website it was felt by some that others were not doing enough work, but in general all minor conflicts blew over quickly and left our team stronger than before.
Early one we were aware of the different strengths our team possessed and divided up tasks so we each had one country to do, one other page’s content and also helped with any part of the website’s creation (flash, design, building) that we felt particularly we had the time and skills to help with. Ensuring early on that we knew what we had to do meant that we could clearly see from both an individual and group perspective what had been done and what was still left to achieve. However, even the best made plans sometimes fail and throughout the competition we had to work hard and pull together to ensure that all the work was completed in time and tasks were divided up fairly. Some people were of the opinion that we should do it as soon as possible while others believed that it was best to concentrate on the website first and then do content.
On top of this we had the fact we had to adjust to a brand new, much larger school and ¾ of our year we didn’t yet know, a new coach/IT teacher and also brand new programs we’d never encountered at our old school: dream weaver and fireworks.
There was only one way we could overcome these challenges and end up with a website done to the best of ability: work together and ensure that at all stages, no matter how stressed and hectic our life became we always had each other to turn to, to help us through. I talked to the team about what they thought about how we’d worked at a team and the feeling was that “In spite of some initial differences and having to adjust to a new school, we worked very well as a team show
Team Diversity
Our team is, I think, particularly diverse. Though at first appearance we all seem similar in money, culture and ability – we are at closer look, a very diverse group.
We all have different interests and skills which has been particularly useful with making our website.
Ella & Holly are both extremely arty – Holly turning this talent to the design of the website and animation, and Ella using it to draw the beautiful pictures in the zoo section. Alex is exceptional at maths and he and I enjoy Science, which though not exactly related to witch-craft has all the same sparked some extremely interesting conversations about the likelihood of magic in the IT room. All off our team, myself particularly, enjoy English which has been useful for writing our content, especially as I want to be a novelist when I grow up so that has been good for re-writing the traditional folktales. Amy is good at Geography which helped us for the global section and Holly, Ella & I enjoy History which helped when making the timeline. However, the subject that has brought us together is IT. However, within IT we all have different talents – Alex can write excellent websites out of raw HTML code, Holly is amazing at flash and I have enjoyed being in charge of building the website in dream weaver – a new experience as prior to the competition done of us had used it.
As for socio-economic backgrounds, though at first appearance we are all reasonably-well of, a member of our team has a single mother and is provided for by benefits with an alcoholic father, another has two high-paid working parents, two have one extremely high-paid parent, and one stay at home mother and myself a single mother.
Also, though all British we all have elements of different countries in us. Amy is half-Norwegian; Holly part Spanish; myself part Canadian and Ella half-Scottish. We are all brought up in different ways and used to different cultures. For example, my name (Shanti) means ‘Peace’ in Hindu, and though my mum is British she closely follows the work of Ghandi and I have been brought up according to these beliefs. A large number of our team our atheists, but my mother is a Quaker, my father a Druid and Alex’s parents Christian.
Though our team is made up of five girls and a boy we are a very diverse, yet close knit group and have always worked together to ensure our differences are part of our success.
