Doors to Diplomacy 2007 winners and their mentor (center) from
Ming-Dao High School, Taichung, Taiwan. They
shared top honors with three American students
who created an innovative Web site called Doors
2 Cambodia. |
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Washington -- Many entries in the Doors
to Diplomacy Web site competition come with interesting stories,
says Yvonne Marie Andres of the Global SchoolNet Foundation,
which co-sponsors the contest with the U.S. State Department.
Doors to Diplomacy challenges young people
ages 11-18 to create Web sites that teach the importance
of international affairs and diplomacy. The winners are
chosen among American teams and among teams from outside
the United States.
Andres recalled a team of students in Uzbekistan
that found that some people in the community were afraid
to fill out a survey on human rights for the project.
“After observing people who were reluctant
to assist us for fear of negative consequences, we grew
afraid to submit our project too,” said one student.
“We were nervous because our Web project contains
controversial information.”
The students “felt they couldn’t
make their Web site public until the very last minute --
which they did,” said Andres. “They ended up
winning the competition that year.”
In another case, students in Ghana wanted
to build a Web site but did not have access to the Internet.
A mentor regularly walked nearly 20 kilometers to an Internet
café to send their research by e-mail to a team of
students in San Diego that helped bring the Web site online.
“We discover a lot of incredible stories
when we read the narratives” submitted by the students
with their entries, Andres told USINFO.
Registration for the 2008 Doors to Diplomacy
competition now is open and lasts until February 28, 2008.
Projects must be completed by March 15, 2008, and winners
will be announced in May 2008.
In 2007, there were 197 entries from 38
countries; the grand prizes went to teams from Taiwan and
Minnesota. (See related
article.)
Past international winners include teams
in India, Macedonia, Mexico and Uzbekistan. About 40 percent
of Doors to Diplomacy entries come from international students.
Each winning student receives a $2,000 scholarship
and their coaches -- generally teachers – are awarded
$500 for their schools. Most Web sites created for the competition
remain online, and anyone can use them “as a library
of resources,” said Andres.
The State Department, which selects the
winners, is looking for Web sites that provide in-depth
research on both sides of an issue and are “easy to
navigate and find what you’re looking for,”
said Janice Clark, a public affairs specialist with the
department and contest judge.
A site “shouldn’t be superficial.
It should really explore an issue,” she said.
Web site topics are not restricted to international
security or foreign relations, Clark said. “One of
the ways we [the State Department] do our job is by promoting
understanding through arts and culture and sports.”
All international entries must be in English,
although many international teams also create Web sites
in the team’s native language. Some teams, like last
year’s Taiwan winners, use instant-translation software
for research.
PEER REVIEW IS PART OF THE EXPERIENCE
Each Doors to Diplomacy team is required
to evaluate four other teams’ entries. “What
I hear from teachers is that this [peer review] process
is more valuable than the students creating their own content,”
Andres said.
“There are a lot of contests where
kids create content -- videos, Web sites and the like --
but they’re so involved in the creating process they
don’t ever get to understand what works and what doesn’t
work,” she said. “When they look at other projects,
suddenly they begin to see what makes for good [Web site]
navigation or what sites provide good citations of resources.”
Many universities also have their teacher-education
students evaluate the entries, Andres said. “It gives
them a perspective on what students are really capable of
doing.”
OTHER COLLABORATIVE ONLINE PROJECTS
Teachers go to Global SchoolNet’s
Web site “to search for [online] projects and partners
that meet their curriculum needs,” said Andres. Its
largest collaborative online learning project is CyberFair,
in which students conduct research and create Web sites
on local community issues. There are more entries from international
students than Americans each year, she said.
Doors to Diplomacy and CyberFair “really
embody 21st -century skills,” said Andres. “Students
need to have a global perspective, they need to be able
to work in teams, they need to cooperate, they need to be
able to create content and share and evaluate that content.”
American students who participate “become
so much more open-minded and understanding of geography,
of political issues, of cultural issues,” she said.
“They just get a much broader view, a global view.”
In 2006, the locations that provided the
highest number of teams for Doors to Diplomacy and CyberFair
were the United States, Taiwan, Armenia, Philippines, India,
Uzbekistan, Poland, Romania, Ghana and Singapore.
For more information, see that State
Department announcement for the 2008 Doors to Diplomacy
competition.
More
information also is available on the Global Schoolnet
Web site.
Louise Fenner
USINFO Staff Writer
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