Belle Harbor School Honored in Two Tech Contests

By Marie Elena Giossi

Candy Girls: Principal Sister Patricia Ann Chelius, C.S.J., of St. Francis de Sales School, Belle Harbor, congratulates, from left, Jillian Urcelay, Lauren Houck, Annette Scotto and Kristin Ferrandino, who won second place in the ThinkQuest N.Y.C. Internet Challenge.

St. Francis de Sales School, Belle Harbor, is having a banner year with technology – earning second place in both the junior high division of the ThinkQuest New York City Internet Challenge and the NBC Universal Digital Media Visions for Tomorrow Competition – both honors in less than one week.

St. Francis, St. Andrew Avellino, Flushing, and St. Leo’s, Corona, were the only three Catholic elementary schools throughout the five boroughs to have students move into the final round of the junior high division of the 2007 ThinkQuest N.Y.C. Internet Challenge late last month. In all, eight finalist teams were chosen from over 180 local entries for the junior high division.

Eighth-graders Annette Scotto, Kristin Ferrandino, Jillian Urcelay and Lauren Houck from St. Francis didn’t sweet talk any judges to get recognition for their mouth-watering Web site, Continental Candy, www.tqnyc.org/NYC074098/.

Coached by part-time Spanish teacher Barbara King and computer teacher Patricia Powers, the girls’ site opens with an amusing “Lollipop Skit,” and then explores the history of candy, how it affects American wallets as well as waistlines, and spans the globe with images and details about confections from various countries. Site visitors can sign the guest book, post notes on the message board, read an interview with a Rockaway-based chocolatier, and participate in polls and quizzes.

This cavity-inducing page, which was produced with Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks software, also includes a search engine, a blog and bibliography.

The team demonstrated their Web page to ThinkQuest representatives, corporate sponsors, educators and peers at an awards ceremony at Columbia University, June 5. As second place winners, each girl received a Kodak digital camera. King and Powers each walked away with a $250 Best Buy gift card and Sister Patricia Ann Chelius, C.S.J., principal, is waiting to find out what the school has won.

All four girls hope to expand their computer knowledge next year when Scotto, Ferrandino and Urcely will attend Fontbonne Hall Academy, Bay Ridge, and Houck will go to Bishop Kearney H.S., Bensonhurst.

The ThinkQuest N.Y.C. Internet Challenge is an annual competition which runs from October to May in which public, private and parochial school students from all five boroughs form teams of two to six students and then research, design and develop educational Web sites.
More than 14,500 students from over 300 schools citywide have participated in this competition since it began six years ago.

For this year’s Internet Challenge, 207 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at St. Francis formed teams and built 69 interactive and educational Web sites pertaining to Hispanic culture. Thirteen teams made the semifinals, up from five last year, and Continental Candy is the school’s first finalist and winning team.

“ThinkQuest gives us the server space, tutorials, and a technology help desk if we have questions. Assistance is there all year long,” King noted.

For the last two years, with Sister Patricia Ann’s blessing, King and Powers have teamed up to task students with producing Web sites around a topic relating to Hispanic culture for the ThinkQuest contest and credit in their Spanish and computer classes. To enhance the project’s interdisciplinary nature, students consulted school librarian, Martha Rossi, for their research, and mathematics teacher Anne Marie Greene, in regard to the layout of their sites.

This year, students developed Web sites about Hispanic baseball players, Caribbean Sea Life, Historical Landmarks in Mexico, Hispanic holidays, and the Battle of the Alamo. Although Continental Candy is centered on sweets, it devotes part of its site to Mexican candy.

Most sites are in English, but many incorporate the Spanish language.

Even with dedicated students and faculty, Sister Patricia Ann noted that projects like this wouldn’t be possible without diocesan support. During the 2006-2007 school year, St. Francis de Sales School received a $4,745 grant from the Alive in Hope Foundation’s Archbishop McEntegart Fund for Catholic Education for the ThinkQuest N.Y.C. Challenge and a $2,500 technology grant. Using those monies, the school purchased flash drives, software, a laptop and digital projection system.

The diocesan Futures in Education Foundation additionally provided the school a $500 technology grant.

But it doesn’t stop there for this school. Just before their Internet Challenge success, industrious eighth-graders Kristin Ferrandino, a Continental Candy team member, and Danielle Farragher secured second place in the Visions for Tomorrow digital media competition. Co-sponsored for the first time by ThinkQuest N.Y.C., NBC Universal Digital Media and the Sci Fi Channel, the contest was open to city schoolchildren, grades eight to 12. Over 280 students, 55 teachers and 40 schools competed.

Students were tasked with creating an original video addressing challenges of today’s world and ways for individuals to affect positive change for future generations. Ferrandino and Farragher created a three-minute video called “The Crisis in Darfur” about the poverty and genocide in Darfur.

During a May 31 winners’ reception at NBC Studios in Rockefeller Center, each girl received a Panasonic digital camcorder. The school received a $500 Best Buy gift card as did King for serving as team coach.

King was interested in the project because it encourages students to read about global issues, educate themselves on a particular topic, share the information with others, find ways to be proactive and effect positive change. She told her eighth- graders that if they wanted to participate, she’d work with them after school.

“These two girls came to me right after class and said they wanted to do this,” King said.

While they were deciding on a topic, the school received a visit from Kevin Kearney, a lawyer for the Brooklyn firm of Wingate, Kearney and Cullen, to talk about his personal involvement with Concern Worldwide, which works to improve the lives of those living in poverty, particularly in Africa.

These 13-year-olds felt they had to respond to the atrocities in Darfur, so they scoured Google Image Search for recent snapshots from the region and contacted each Web site/photographer for permission to use the images in their project.

Using a family video camera and Microsoft Movie Maker, they combined the pictures with text and negotiated with EMI Music Publishing for permission to use the song, “Look After You” by The Frey in the background, as the words and pictures fade in and out. At the video’s conclusion, there’s information about how to make a donation to help the people of Darfur. The video can be viewed at www.dobschools.org/Video.

The most time-consuming part of the process, the girls said, was requesting and waiting for approval to use the copyrighted materials. The video compilation, which they did at home, took about one week, and the entire project was completed in under a month.

“The first time we watched the final product, it brought a tear to my eye,” Farragher said, “and then when I showed it to my mom and dad, they started crying.”
According to Brother William Clifford, CSC, diocesan associate superintendent for Instruction and Technology, the video is a “perfect example” of students’ using their education to “make the world a better place.”

Ferrandino and Farragher combined knowledge they gained about the humanitarian crisis with the language arts and Web building skills they’ve learned in school to raise awareness about a global problem for which there’s a lack of local awareness.

“When we told people the video was about Darfur they didn’t know what we were talking about,” said Ferrandino.

“People looked at us like we had 10 heads,” added Farragher, who’s enrolled in Bishop Kearney H.S. for the fall. “We thought adults would be more aware.”

Both girls were pleased to do well in the competition, although they didn’t feel they needed recognition for doing something they say everyone is supposed to do – “trying to help change the world.”

St. Leo’s Ancient Rome Team

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