Date: Wednesday February 17
Where: Camberwell Grammar School
Event: Presentation of Laptop prize to winner of the National Competition - The Great Race
Congratulations to Projit Banerjee fro Camberwell Grammar who is the Grand Champion of
Primary section of The Great Race, a competition with entrants from throughout New Zealand
and Australia. What makes Projit’s success is even more outstanding given that he was only
in grade 4 at the time and was competing against students from grades 5 and 6. Projit was
so enthused by The Great Race that he actually gave up time in his holidays to compete in
the Grand Final.
Over 1700 students competed throughout New Zealand and Australia in each of the primary
and secondary levels.
The Great Race is a c ontemporary online competition for primary and secondary school
students based on History, Geography and current world events. The Great Race is one of
the finely-tuned learning resources pioneered by Tasmanian company Giant Classroom. The
innovative education tool, launched in 2004, has evolved into an exhilarating elimination
competition concluding in an end-of-year Grand Final.
The knockout competition presents students with ten questions each week that are based on
a topical international issue. Each heat runs for four weeks each term. Students submit their
answers online and can check their results and rankings against other schools in a friendly
real-time environment; creating a “thinking frenzy,” as described by former teacher and Giant
Classroom founder David Reid. The Great Race also challenges participants to refine their
research skills by exploring a variety of information resources, which often proves highly
successful in re-engaging students with their school library.
Pearson Education provides a range of excellent resources books as prizes at the end of
each heat.
The leading five students from each state of Australia and New Zealand after each heat are
invited to compete in the Grand Final which involves answering 30 questions live online within
a restricted timeframe. Projit competed in three of the heats and qualified for the final in each
of them. During the final, Projit was able to get more correct answers than any other student
in Australia or New Zealand in the allocated timeframe (83%). Camberwell Grammar also
had two other students in the final, Tony Zhang and Jack Heyes
The prize for the winning student is their choice of either a laptop computer or an iPhone.
The first heat for the 2010 Great Race knockout competition commences on 1st March.
The Giant Classroom:
The Giant Classroom has evolved from a small group of classroom teachers who in 1992 saw
the potential for information and communications technology to be applied in the classroom.
After more than a decade of evolution The Giant Classroom is now a significant cooperative
providing programs for History, Geography, Social Studies and Science teachers in both
primary and secondary schools with annual enrolments of over 20,000 students.
Teachers find these resources useful in extending students and developing their research
skills. The online nature means that the resources are readily available to all schools, but the
careful design of the programs means that students don’t need a computer all the time.
Consequently Giant Classroom programs are used by many schools for entire grade groups.
The self-paced style of the resources means that they can easily fit into established courses
without having to allocate time from other areas of an increasingly packed curriculum.
For further details, please contact:
Darren Gavin
Ph: 03 62312885
Darren@giantclassroom.com.au
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