Madurai school excels

madurai: building a free, educational website that aspires to empower, enable and connect students around the world by integrating technology into classrooms, a group of students from madurai school have won an international competition. a group of students from a madurai school with its technical wizardry, joining with teams of international students, has won the ‘the global virtual classroom contest, 2008-09’ (gvc). vasanthi lajapathi, a student of class xii of c. s. ramachary memorial matriculation higher secondary school, tirunagar, madurai  led her team to win the gold award in the secondary school category under the ‘special recognition for helping focus.’ the contenders were the ones led by janet barnstable, percy julian middle school, oak park elementary, usa; and tim alguire and stephen mackinnon, athens district high school, canada. they have built a website about water called 'world of water,' which has information on water cycle, desalination, aquatic life, pollution, global warming and more. the website has contents of exceptional research, providing visitors excellent information and resources. the competition is conducted annually aimed at teaching students three essential skills of cross-cultural communication, collaboration and computer skills. the 2008 –2009 competition saw close to 2,000 students from 75 schools across 23 different countries participating in it. amidst their school's schedule, the teams comprising three schools around the world battled it out to design websites. twenty-one completed websites were submitted for judging on march 31, 2009. the judgments were based on collaboration, content, presentation and the helping focus, student participation and their effort as a team. the content of the site was judged by the degree of originality and other aspects like information and its appeal to a worldwide audience.