CONTEST PUT IN HIATUS!
Despite accolades from many quarters, lofty intentions and the hard work of volunteers, it's become necessary to put the Webs of Wonder Contest in hiatus. The reason is simple. In both 2001 and 2002, no entries met the requirements clearly set out by the rules.
With unanimous approval from the contest judges, this year's prize money will be donated to other groups promoting SF-related education, including the Center for Science Fiction at the University of Kansas.
Perhaps the contest was poorly promoted, or the rules unrealistic or unclear. In any event, WOW is now suspended. Perhaps it will resume when teachers out there start sharing curriculum aids that use science fiction as a helpful tool. (There are some hopeful signs!)
Meanwhile -- we will maintain the best product of the contest, the RESOURCE LIST. Many teachers, librarians and readers have already found it useful as a guide to books, reading lists and other materials about science fiction, education and related matters. If you wish to add to the list, or participate in other wonderful projects aimed at helping teachers and kids through science fiction, please join the discussion at www.readingforfuture.com
Our thanks to all the volunteers and judges, as well as to Stan Schmidt and the fine folks at Analog Magazine, whose co-sponsorship made this worthy effort possible.
A cash prize encourages the creation of excellent new sites on
the World Wide Web that unite a love of learning with a passion
for good stories.
For years, individual educators have given students science fiction tales to help enliven difficult topics. A chemistry teacher might illustrate part of her curriculum with a classic Hal Clement novel. An ethics class might argue deep questions raised by Tom Godwin's famous quandary story "The Cold Equations." A good fictional portrayal can make that crucial difference, helping a confused student say "Aha, now I get it!"
Alas, these efforts have mostly been isolated. Great teachers had no easy way to share their study guides, illustrations, provocative question sets . . . or the story itself. Until now. Today's Internet empowers teachers and web-designers to develop vivid materials that brighten any subject, then share with colleagues around the world.
Moreover, this approach can also help get compelling literature
into the hands of young people who might otherwise never come
across some of today's greatest stories.
The first annual WOW Contest - for educational web sites that use science fiction to help classroom
educators teach difficult subjects - was won by James Van Pelt
of Colorado and Andrew E. Love of Maryland, who shared the $1,000 prize, presented by David brin at a ceremony in Chicago, at the World
Science Fiction Convention, on September 2, 2000.
Unfortunately, the 2000-2001 round had to be called off without any winners. This second round emphasized that winning sites should use stories and novels to help teachers present real high school science or history curricula. Although some clever sites were submitted, none of the entries met this clear criterion.
"A majority of the judges concurred that the specific standards weren't met," said David Brin. "But I've been prevailed upon to try one more time, aiming for entries to be submitted by December 31, 2002, with prizes presented (we hope) at the World Science Fiction Convention in Toronto - over Labor Day weekend, 2003."
This Year's Contest explicitly encourages participants to form teams, ideally including at least one actual teacher or librarian and focusing on a currently-used school course, text or syllabus. Best results may be achieved by combining real classroom experience with proficiency at web design and a love of good, exciting stories.
Again, the principal aim is not to create a flashy fan site for a particular author's work but to make it easy for working classroom teachers and librarians to use stories and novels to help teach some extant and widely used school curriculum.
To open things up a bit, we've decided that an alternate approach will also qualify this year. This alternative will be for a contestant to create (in consultation with recognized experts) a large and highly useful database of available science fiction stories and novels appropriate for all grades and reading levels, with capsule descriptions, designed to supplement and run in parallel to the influential but SF-deficient Accelerated Reader and California Reads programs. Such a database could utilize - and expand upon - many of the already-extant reading lists found in the Wow Contest Resource Section. It should also include links to a fair number of stories that authors have made available for downloading for free from their personal web sites.
This round will have an entry cutoff date of December, 2002.
For details about rules, available supporting materials and how to enter, click on links found alongside this page.
A NOTE ABOUT PROMOTING THE CONTEST: While a great many people made honest efforts to help spread the
word, we obviously did not reach a wide-enough spectrum of people
last year. Please help by copying this entry page and sharing
it with teachers, librarians, web-designers, dedicated book-lovers
and professional organizations whose members might be interested.
Refer interested parties to this site http://www.analogsf.com/wow
See also http://www.davidbrin.com/