Global Junior Challenge Award

On December 12, Global Junior Challenge 2002 recognized Kidlink's "KidSpace" with an Award of Special Mention, one of two awards given for this area.

Global Junior Challenge is an international award recognizing the best projects using ICT for educational purposes and training of young persons up to the age of 29. In December 2000, GJC awarded Kidlink the 1st prize in the category "Educational projects for users up to 18 years old"

This year's competition attracted 430 participating projects from 64 countries. The jury selected 74 finalist projects in 5 categories, including two from Kidlink! 20 Awards were handed out by the Mayor of Rome and the Italian Minister for Innovation and Technology in Rome's City Hall.

Kidlink is a global social network of volunteers acting to empower kids and youth using educational programs freely available through the Internet.

KidSpace is a Kidlink service for publishing and sharing on the Internet that runs in an ordinary web browser. It supports online collaboration between students and educators, offers a simpler interface for creating and managing webpages, and allows for easy peer feedback and comments.

Earlier this year, KidSpace received an Online Learning Award from the Special Interest Group Telelearning (SIGTel) of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), USA.

KidSpace was created by Patti Weeg, Bonnie Thurber, and Bob Davis as Kidlink volunteers. Bob Davis is an Associate Director for Academic Technology at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA, Patti Weeg teaches at Delmar Elementary School, Delmar, MD, USA, and Bonnie Thurber works for the Northwestern University Collaboratory Project, Evanston, IL, USA.

In Kidlink, KidSpace has become a central place for teachers to let their students create and publish works, for coordination and support of their students' participation in numerous educational projects.

What GJC says about the Special Mentions Award...