Celebrating Germany's 50th birthday

by Nigel Treblin 
New online-project about Germany's 50th birthday aims at winning thousands of marks....

A group of 15 pupils from grades 9, 10 and 11 produces a web-page about the German history. This is the task in the "Road Ahead Prize", an online competition by Microsoft. By representing the history from two different points of view, the group tries to use the medium Internet in a reasonable way. The website shows the German history especially "seen from outside". Comparisons with the history of other states, articles from foreign magazines and newspapers, surveys with pupils from the USA, e.g. are special topics of the websites. On a weekend-trip to an exhibition about the German history in the "House of history" in Bonn, the pupils informed themselves and collected impression for their project. This trip was sponsored by the "Verein ehemaliger Ulricianer". 350 groups had started in the competition in September 1999. The group of the Ulricianum was chosen for the final round last week. Now they and 99 other groups have time until May 2000 to finish their projects. The winner of the competition will get 25,000 marks. Already in the last year a group of the Ulricianum took part in the competition and was among the best 100 schools. The website is to be found here:

 http://schulen.nordwest.net/Ulricianum_Aurich/50brd/