Oracle Education Foundation
Oracle Education Foundation| Think.com and ThinkQuest | Rationale and links
Think.com
A protected online environment for schools worldwide, hosted and managed by Oracle. It provides a suite of tools for messaging, website publishing, research, discussion, and project collaboration. The school needs only an Internet connection and computers with a browser. It's 100% free and contains no advertising. The web based online community facilitates project learning and students' use of technology. In this teacher-mediated environment students and teachers are granted space to design and implement learning projects within their class, or with other schools globally. It promotes creativity, teamwork, communication, and cross-cultural understanding. It’s available in nine languages, including Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai and Turkish. www.think.com
Inspire your students through Project Learning on Think.com
Oracle have supported MirandaNet for many years, and many MirandaNetters already know – and use – Think.com from Oracle. The program has gone through a new development, and the latest version of Think.com, originally released in August 2006, introduces a new Projects Space. This enables teachers to easily organise their students into working groups and run projects.
The teacher, in a role as facilitator and guide can create projects and challenges that motivate students to experience and explore relevant, real-world problems and issues. The Project Space provides students with the tools and discussion forums to present their findings, and to create products to share with others what they have learned. Teachers can create projects that within their schools, or join with other schools and students from around the world.
Engaging with the world
Oracle have introduced a feature in which teachers can describe their projects
and request additional members from the community of Think.com. Students
can also request to join open projects: their teacher will be asked to confirm
the request for membership, or if teachers prefer they can limit the membership
to known students and schools that they are partnering with. Students can
work on the content of their projects together and once they are happy to
share the results, make it available to everyone on Think.com.
The Project Space therefore becomes a major area within Think.com that can be accessed via the People, World and Organisation portals.
Developing 21st Century Skills
Oracle believe that the new Project Space will facilitate how we learn
best – socially
in groups, collaborating to achieve a challenge and reaching a relevant goal.
Creativity and innovation must be some of the outcomes of a modern educational
system and Oracle believe that the Project Space in Think.com helps promote
these outcomes. They hope that as an existing user or a new user to Think.com
you will find the Project Space an ideal place to help your students develop
the skills that are today’s “units of currency” for modern
knowledge work; Critical Thinking & Problem Solving, Creativity & Innovation,
Collaboration, Teamwork & Leadership, Cross Cultural Understanding, Communication & Information
Literacy, Computing & ICT literacy and Career & Learning Self-reliance.
ThinkQuest
An international competition in which students and teachers are challenged to create the best educational websites. Winners receive a trip to ThinkQuest Live and other valuable prizes. Open to students between the ages of 9 and 19 and their teacher-coaches worldwide, students are encouraged to team with peers in other regions to develop websites on educational topics. As they create their sites, the participants develop important 21st century skills such as teamwork, critical thinking, self-direction, problem solving, and technology skills. Additionally, the students become published web-authors in the popular ThinkQuest Library, sharing their work with 30 million web learners each year. www.thinkquest.org
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