Until 2006 the UK never had an entry into the International ThinkQuest Competition. Thinkquest is a competition but one that is almost unique in the world. Students are asked to create web sites covering topics that interest them.
They work in teams, sometimes from across the world and collaborate to create these sites drawing on any expertise they can locate. The sites are totally student created with an adult to act as mentor or guide.
I promoted ThinkQuest to an online community within an e-learning project known as the Virtual Workspace not knowing how students would react. Two teams appeared out of the ether with students drawing in potential team members from within the 18 thousand or so learners within the community. Lee's team had a number of challenges to overcome in the six month journey for the project. They completed the work and ended up publishing a site on Nanotechnology which is now in the competition library. The team that put the project together were from totally different schools. They never met until they went on a trip to London paid for by Oracle, sponsors of the ThinkQuest competition.
On the coach journey back they began planning their 2007 entry which won the 14 to 19 category in the UK version of the ThinkQuest competition having chosen the topic - Water.
The potential of online communities and that of project based learning really came home to me as a result of this work but don't listen to me listen to Lee on the ThinkQuest Podcast.
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Schools, colleges and university are just some of the places where learning takes place but school kids and students can spend a lot of their time in these spaces. There are other places where people learn, some through doing courses at work or online or even learning from others around them in all sorts of situations. The posts here are about learning spaces, writings about learning and technology and thoughts and ideas about all of these.
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