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Think.com receives Merrill Lynch award for educational excellence
Oracle's Think.com initiative has won the Merrill Lynch Investing in Young People Award, supported by the UK government's Department for Education and Skills.
Think.com is a free, web-based educational service that provides primary and secondary school students around the world with protected email, their own web pages, and a set of powerful learning and collaboration tools. It encourages the exchange of ideas and experiences between schools of different sizes, age
groups and locations.
In particular, the project has benefited schools in disadvantaged areas and those catering to children with special needs, by enabling
pupils to interact securely online with other learners.
WebPlay, an internet-based arts education charity, uses Think.com to help students create and produce plays in conjunction with professional theatre companies and children in different countries. One school that has experienced the benefits of Think.com and WebPlay is Newick House School in Sussex, whose pupils suffer from a range of learning difficulties
including autism.
Over the past two years, pupils at Newick House have used Think.com resources to communicate with pupils in the USA and the UK, build their own web pages, and involve their parents in their learning. Using WebPlay, they have written and performed their own plays which have been videoed, shared
internationally and judged in the WebPlay Oscars.
As well as being a fun and valuable collaborative experience, the WebPlay programme also had a positive impact on the pupils' learning abilities, with 80% of participants seeing an improvement
in their reading age as a result.
The Merrill Lynch Investing in Young People Award is given to companies that are successful in helping to raise the level of achievement of young people either within the UK educational curriculum or outside of the mainstream educational context. The award was presented to Oracle at Business in the Community's Awards for Excellence Gala Dinner on 12 July 2006,
in the presence of HRH the Prince of Wales.
Nick Chambers, Education Development Director at Business in the Community, said: "Oracle has demonstrated how technology can be used to encourage the exchange of ideas and experiences between schools of different size, age range and geographical location and enable their pupils to share ideas and learn from one another. Business in the Community encourages businesses to work in partnership with schools in order to help young people to
achieve their potential."
"This prestigious award recognises the role that companies like Oracle can play in supporting the development of young people," said Ian Smith, senior vice president and managing director, Oracle, UK and Ireland and South Africa. "Think.com is inspiring children across the globe to discover, learn and share. It started with three UK schools in 1999, and has grown to support
a global population of 7,393 schools and more than 643,000 pupils."
"Think.com has been instrumental to WebPlay's success and the impact that our programme has on children's learning," said Sydney Thornbury, Executive Director, WebPlay. "Working in partnership with Oracle and Think.com provides a safe online environment that children from across the world can use to learn about theatre and each other. Evaluations have confirmed that WebPlay is highly motivational and effective at developing children's learning and we are delighted to be working with Oracle
to bring the programme to more children every year."
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