SCIENCE

The Oracle Education Foundation (OEF) and New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) signed a partnership agreement to bring OEF’s ThinkQuest to more than 8,500 New York students over the next two years.

ThinkQuest is an online learning platform that helps students develop important 21st century skills, including communication, critical thinking, and technology skills. With ThinkQuest, students and teachers can create web-based projects and engage in collaboration with peers globally.

To launch the partnership, OEF will collaborate with NYIT, the New York State Teacher Centers, and associated Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) to train 2,000 teachers on how to integrate 21st century skills instruction and project learning into their curricula using ThinkQuest.

In addition, teachers and students will have the opportunity to enter the work they produce into the ThinkQuest International Competition 2011, which challenges students to solve real-world problems by creating web-based projects, digital media, or web-based applications.

ThinkQuest currently supports over 548,000 students and teachers in 47 countries.

Supporting Quotes

“The Oracle Education Foundation’s mission is to help students develop skills for life and work in the 21st century, including communication, critical thinking, and technology skills. By providing New York students with access to ThinkQuest, we will help them build these important skills and ensure their future success,” said Brad Saffer, Vice President, Oracle Corporate Citizenship.

“Partnering with the Oracle Education Foundation gives us the opportunity to truly address the 21st century skills of collaboration, invention, and creation,” said Stan Silverman, Director of NYIT’s Technology Based Learning System. “ThinkQuest’s powerful professional development model will enable New York educators to integrate project learning and technology into their curricula with confidence.”

“Educational partnerships, like the one with the Oracle Education Foundation, instill in students a love for learning through challenging projects, enrich their classroom experiences with real applications, and prepare them to be the leaders of tomorrow,” said Nada Anid, Ph.D., Dean of NYIT’s School of Engineering and Computing Sciences.