One team reviewed websites completed by other teams before they started theirs. A team member noted about one site, “It’s good, but isn’t it sort of short?... I can make a much better one.” This prompted a discussion of elements of a good website.

Two team members plan their website

The team in Roxbury used an AlphaSmart portable keyboard, which felt like a small laptop to the youth. Particularly exciting about using this tool is watching the download: Sentences appear as if by magic on the screen, but slowly enough to read along. One’s own writing fills the screen.

This team designed the outline of its website using index cards for each page, arranging them on the wall and then writing the name of each page on the card as the corresponding webpage was created.

One team’s process included team members taking turns at the keyboard to do the following:

• Make a headline
• Adjust the font type, color, and size to the group’s liking
• Insert a picture of a team activity
• Write a paragraph about the group’s experiment
• Make a table summarizing the experimental data

Finally, they mounted a draft site to a temporary place on a Web server. They were excited that their friends could look at the group’s very first webpage.

One student brought her favorite stuffed lions to the celebration

“Tech doctors” came to some CTCs to help coaches and team members make links and choose design elements for their websites. Both tech doctors and ScienceQuest staff helped register the teams on the ThinkQuest website and upload the teams’ sites to ThinkQuest.