Good news for kids who like to hunker down and build top-notch websites: ThinkQuest is sticking around.
ThinkQuest, the popular international Web design competition for kids, will be acquired by Oracle's nonprofit arm, the Help Us Help Foundation.
The ThinkQuest Internet Challenge was in limbo for the past year as its parent company, Advanced Network & Services, sought an organization to continue the program.
"We felt that ThinkQuest was really poised for a second phase of growth," said Steve Rappaport, director of programs for Advanced Network & Services, the company that created the program and administered it for six years. "We didn't feel that we were the right organization to do that."
The Help Us Help Foundation "seems to really understand the program and appreciate the value of it," Rappaport said. "This will really complement the work that they are already doing."
When it was first conceived, the ThinkQuest Internet Challenge brought kids from all over the world together in teams to build educational websites. It was not unusual for a kid in Estonia to work with a kid in Jamaica and a kid in Iowa, and never meet one another face to face.
Oftentimes all of the collaboration on research, coding, writing and design was done on the Web, and through e-mail and IM. Teams that made it to the finals would meet their teammates at the awards ceremony.
More than 100,000 kids from 125 countries have participated in the ThinkQuest Internet Challenge over the past six years, Rappaport said.
ThinkQuest has since been restructured to a classroom-based competition that takes place at the state level called ThinkQuest USA. Kids still build educational websites, but they work with their classmates rather than kids overseas. Oracle will now run this competition.
The company will also host and manage the existing library of 6,000 student-created educational websites.
"It's a great educational resource of student-created content on the Web," Rappaport said.
"Previously we've been giving them the tools, but now we're actually giving them a really exciting reason to use all this stuff," Oracle's David Richards said.
The Help Us Help Foundation has donated more than $6 million in hardware and software to schools and youth organizations this year, according to its website.
The company also runs Think.com, a Web-based educational platform for students and teachers.
Oracle will also inherit the opportunity to work with ThinkQuest's international partners who now run Web design competitions of their own.
More than 20 countries around the world, including Brazil, Estonia, Switzerland, China and Argentina, run their own ThinkQuest programs in their native languages.
Richards said the organization hopes to resurrect the international competition. ThinkQuest USA would hold a national competition, which would then feed into an international contest, similar to the initial ThinkQuest Internet Challenge.
"The Internet as a communications medium can help break down cultural and political barriers and help promote understanding," Richards said. "ThinkQuest creates a great medium for children to collaborate together and do something that's really useful."
