Ask500 beta

There’s a reason we’ve seen an explosion of activity from the Kingdom of Belgium: Ask500People has been incorporated into a nationwide school project to explore and use internet tools.

Hundreds of teachers and over 7,000 teens are participating in 270 teams in the Digital Masters competition, which is sponsored by Agoria ICT, Belgium’s largest employers’ organisation and trade association.

In fact, the very first task was to poll the world on Ask500People, focusing on problems and solutions related to one’s ecological footprint. So if you’ve noticed a surge in questions related to the environment (mixed in among all the political polls!), this is why! And organizers were able to tap into our API to keep track of each team’s questions and votes.

“The objective here is to get the schools to use great platforms as Ask500People — I love the fact that they can actually see and read reactions from all over the world,” wrote Steven Pauwels, the architect of the project. He added that Ask500People was the first site he suggested.

The polls were just the beginning, however, and the contest continues for six weeks with two more challenges, taking advantage of other services and platforms. (The first activation? “How nerdy are you?“) Ultimately, the hope is that students become more aware of the tools available to them on the web, and the value of information technology.

“We encourage the teams to use the vast possibilities of the internet, and so far, we have banners around the internet, websites, movies, songs, flyers, leaflets, fanclubs, forums and much much more, all created by these teenagers,” he said. “It is a great thing to see that school principles and teachers are very eager to participate and help out with a sequel!”

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 11:31 am and is filed under Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.