Students Web pages to explain tech vision

The National Science Teachers Association has partnered with the Toshiba Corp. for an awards program next year that encourages students in kindergarten through 12th grade to design World Wide Web pages that explain their vision of the future of science and technology.

NSTA' s ExploraVision Awards program was established in 1993 to promote the use of science and technology to solve problems by asking students to envision what a form of technology would look like 20 years into the future. As part of the judging process, students have submitted videos explaining their projects. But NSTA decided that it was time to update the competition.

"Seven or eight years ago, the best the way to communicate was through video. But that's shifting now, and the new way is through the Internet and Web pages," said Arthur Eisenkraft, president-elect of NSTA. "We are very aware and cognizant of finding ways to integrate technology in the classroom. It's one thing to use Web pages, but it's another to actually create one."

This year's program will ask students to design Web pages that explain their projects, with the 24 regional winners creating Web sites based on their design ideas. Eight teams will be selected as national winners -- four first-place and four second-place -- with each student on the first-place teams receiving a $10,000 U.S. savings bond and the second- place winners receiving $5,000 bonds.

"By integrating Web pages into the communications aspect of the project, we're enriching the students' education, which is the whole point," Eisenkraft said.

The deadline to submit entries for the 2000 ExploraVision competition is Feb. 2, 2000. More information can be found at www.toshiba.com/tai/exploravision.