For Immediate Release


Contacts:
Mayumi Kishimoto Kimberly Pineda
JAPIAS Oracle Education Foundation
+81-3-3204-8104 +1-650-506-8831
kishimoto@japias.jp kimberly.pineda@oracle.com



JAPIAS and The Oracle Education Foundation
Establish Partnership to Promote ThinkQuest in Japan


REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., and TOKYO, Japan, July 1, 2004 - The Japan Association for Promotion of Internet Application in School Education(JAPIAS) and the Oracle Education Foundation have signed an agreement to promote and support ThinkQuest in Japan. Through ThinkQuest, teams of students from around the world collaborate to create educational Web sites. Winning teams will attend ThinkQuest Live, a four-day event held during Oracle Corporationfs flagship technology conference, OpenWorld. Most entries to the competition are published in the ThinkQuest Library, a highly popular educational resource visited by millions of users every month, at http://thinkquest.org/library/index.html.

"Students who participate in ThinkQuest learn valuable lessons, such as teamwork and research skills, important in their education and later careers", said Mr. Haruhisa Ishida, Chairman of the Board of Directors of JAPIAS. "ThinkQuest is a great way to motivate and engage students in collaborative project-based learning."

ThinkQuest competitions are held twice a year, and competing teams have approximately six months to complete their projects. Students, ages 9 through 19, work in groups of 3 to 6 children, coached by a teacher. Their Web sites must meet demanding criteria that focus on collaboration and teamwork, community and global connections, content and design, educational value, and technical performance.

"Our partnership with JAPIAS will allow students and teachers in Japan to become an integral part of the ThinkQuest community,"said Oracle Education Initiatives Vice President Lori Facey. "By working together, we can further the program's primary goal of encouraging multinational collaboration to help students think globally and understand different cultures."

Students and teachers interested in participating in ThinkQuest may enroll teams now at http://www.thinkquest.org.



About ThinkQuest

ThinkQuest is a program of the Oracle Education Foundation. It promotes project-based collaborative learning by inviting students ages 9-19 to create educational web sites. Since its inception in 1995, over 100,000 students and teachers from 125 countries have participated in ThinkQuest, making it one of the world's most successful educational technology programs. Over 5,000 student-authored web sites are on display in the highly popular ThinkQuest Library, hosted by the Oracle Foundation as a free public resource, and used by millions of visitors per month. For more information please visit http://www.thinkquest.org.

About the Japan Association for Promotion of Internet Application in School Education (JAPIAS)

JAPIAS is a non-profit organization that seeks to promote utilization of the Internet in schools and to create a new educational environment, to contribute to the development of the human resources in Japan and throughout the world. ThinkQuest activities in Japan have been promoted since the ThinkQuest Japan Program Promotion Committee was established in 1998. The committee, which evolved to JAPIAS in 2003, has been promoting and supporting both the ThinkQuest international competition and the Japanese-based local program ThinkQuest@JAPAN. For more information please visit http://www.japias.jp.

About the Oracle Education Foundation

The Oracle Education Foundation is a non-profit organization that assists primary and secondary schools and youth organizations by providing resources, training, and support to integrate technology into the learning environment. For more information please visit http://www.oraclefoundation.org.

About Oracle

Oracle is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information, please visit http://www.oracle.com.

Trademarks

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. ThinkQuest is a registered trademark of the Oracle Education Foundation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.