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About THINKQUEST.COM at Mann What Is It? THINK.COM is a web-based environment focused on students between the ages of 7-13, funded entirely by Oracle Education Foundation. It is a “protected sub-web” that is not open or visible to the entire Internet, yet it does have member schools all over the world. Member students receive free email and websites, plus the ability to send instant notes to other members. Every member is given access to the tools and space to create and share their work online, i.e. posting articles, poetry, pictures, lists, media, and interactive items like message boards, debates, and requests for votes. How Does It Contribute to Learning and meeting State Standards? There are multitudes of ways that educators use Think.com as a learning tool. They integrate lessons from any curricular area into Think.com, including writing assignments, team collaboration, Web Quests, homework assistance, after school programs, etc. Think.com can enhance any lesson by integrating text, video, images, and sound. Students and teachers can use Think.com from school, home or the library. Students can work on collaborative projects with students from another country. Teachers can also use it to communicate with parents and provide summaries of homework and classroom activities. Think.com has a Teacher Zone, a community where instructors share ideas and offer guidance to each other on how to creatively and effectively use Think.com to enhance their curricula. How Is Content Monitored to Keep Children Safe? Only students and teachers can obtain accounts to Think.com, provided they are part of a member school. Every contribution and item of content posted in Think.com is identified by the author. This individual identity label encourages responsible behavior. All members of Think.com are asked to abide by the "Rules" of Think.com as described in the Terms of Use before they can build their website. Oracle and the Think.com staff take the subject of children's privacy and online protection very seriously. They make every effort to institute policies that ensure the protection of minors accessing and using Think.com. In addition, Mann students sign a Network User Agreement and, as of Third Quarter, a specific Think.Com agreement. Think.com includes special Admin Tools that allow regular content and image searches by each participating school. Each member school is responsible for the regular review and removal of materials that do not meet the standards as set forth in the Think.com Terms of Use or the school's Acceptable Use Policy. Think pages are wonderful places for you to be creative so long as you do not post the following inappropriate types of material that have nothing to do with education or your class work.
Remember the Mann User Agreement and THINKQUEST Permission Slip you have signed. Review those for more guidelines on appropriate site content. |
Global Collaboration: The KoalaWhere Project Thinki the Koala's Visit to Our School We got involved in the KoalaWhere? project through THINK.COM because we met friends and teachers from Australia online who invited us to participate. Thinki was the name given to a stuffed koala by the children of Montmorency South Primary School in Australia. These students wanted to help the Australian Koala Foundation save the koalas. Thinki traveled all over Australia, England, and German before coming to Colorado in Summer, 2006. All along the way he visited schools and went home with children who wrote in his journal for him, stamped his passport, and taught their friends about koalas. He carried a suitcase full of momentos of the places he stopped and children he met. He went to Bangalore, India after he left us and finally landed back in his own hometown near Melbourne sometime in December of 2006. Student Comments About Thinki the Koala's Visit to Our School
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