Supercomputer Applications
 Final Project Guidelines Imagining the Future

Project Due Date: May 15, 2002


Guidelines

The ThinkQuest site has posted guidelines for the final presentation:
Final Project Presentation

Summary: Project Guidelines for Imagining the Future

A. Introduce your team

Introduce your team members. Give brief description of your project in the form of an abstract. Add a short section describing your motivation to choose that particular project.

B. Review current systems and solutions

If applicable to your team project, give a critical review of the systems that fall in the same category as your team project. Describe the characteristics that you liked in such systems (and you perhaps incorporated in your system), as well as characteristics that you disliked or you believe were missing. What were advantages and what were disadvantages of such systems?

C. Describe your team project

Provide more detailed description of your project including things that are already implemented as well as methods or solutions that you propose.
  1. What is already implemented? Describe your solutions and if appropriate, contrast them with current systems. Since we are "Imagining the Future", think of potential additions that could make your program more effective if you were given more time and resources.
  2. What are valuable learning experiences that your system offers? What educational objectives are used? Who is your audience? Who are the users of your system?
  3. Use media that most effectively convey your ideas: text, images, video and audio files, animation, 3D graphics, mock-up constructions. The choice is yours. Make sure you use generally accepted file formats, ideally the ones that are possible to view using web browser and freely available plug-ins, or through widely used applications. Animated GIF images can be used to show how OpenGL programs work.
  4. Provide links to your computer code with descriptions of what each part does.

D. Project diary

ThinkQuest wants you to include a project diary, a set of documents that gives a good idea about the development of your project over the time. Describe briefly other solutions that you came up with but discarded. It could be that these solutions did not fit well with the rest of your system after all, or perhaps you thought of some better ideas, etc. If you changed your mind, explain why you gave up on your original ideas. If your team maintained an off-line forum (mailing list) that helped you exchange and record all your discussions and findings, select the best parts to include in this diary. If you used TQ chat to discuss your project ideas with someone let them know date and time so they can send you chat log to include in your report. Feel free to include reports about any special moment or event that captured your imagination or made you laugh while working on your project. Was there something that inspired you to work in a particular direction? Do not forget to mention the dates when the things happened (at least approximately). Those descriptions can be even in the form of short notes, but sort and formulate them nicely so they are easy to understand. Enclose pictures and drawings that you generated while working on your project. As advised earlier, rotate on this duty - all team members should participate!

E. Mention teams that you collaborated with

List all teams that you worked with and give a brief description of that collaboration. Some other teams that participate in Imagining the Future may be working on projects and solutions that fit wonderfully with your project. If, for example, you are working on a new system or new gadget, their project may describe an application that fits perfectly with your program. In this case the solutions from their project would clearly enrich your work and make it well rounded. If that is the case, you may decide to incorporate their solutions in the context of your project (obtain their permission first!). As before, do not forget to credit your colleagues. This proves that you appreciate and respect someone else's work. It also shows that you are looking towards the "outside" world, and that you can recognize the potential in someone else's good ideas. You are strongly encouraged to try this kind of collaboration, but it is not an absolute requirement. Another important note: your team's creativity and originality must be clear in your project, and that the majority of the work belongs to your team. Do not add and reference too many projects made by other teams so that they outweigh your team's input! Be critical and exercise balance when deciding what to include and reference.

F. List resources used

List all literature and resources used while working on your team project. Those could be books, different resources found on Internet, movies, games. Provide their full names, authors, publishers, dates, web pointers wherever applicable.

G. List hardware and software systems used

List all hardware and software systems and applications that you used. Those could be either systems that you decided to incorporate and couple with your solutions in the project, or you used them to develop this web presentation.

H. List credits

Credit all people that helped you working on the project and describe what was their role. They may be your colleagues who thought you how to use Photoshop, an engineer who helped you find some resources, a teacher that helped you organize material - your support network may include many other people and contributions

I.Create a winning website

Decide on a clear and attractive layout for your website with easy navigation links and good overall design. Choose an attractive color scheme that is bright and cheerful and make all parts of the site look as though they belong to the whole. Include plenty of graphics to show how your project works. Make sure that the opening page grabs the judges attention and that your program purpose and educational objectives are evident from the beginning. Be sure to include all of the above sections in your presentation (Sections A. through H.) but you may add additional pages too. Don't make individual pages too long, but instead provide links to sub pages if sections get too involved. It is also helpful to provide a site layout in the form of an outline with links to each of the sub pages. It is probably a good idea to specify why Internet2 and high speed bandwidth are essential to your project. Remember, all of this will have to be ported to the ThinkQuest website for your team. Check your old email for team account and password.
Note: Your project must be posted on the ThinkQuest web server by May 15th!