Barton County Upward Bound at Barton Community College recognizes Robert Fortner Hoisington High School, Kade Cook, HHS and Kimberly Dixon Claflin High School who competed in the national 2010 TRIO Quest activities sponsored by the University of Washington. These students were named semi-finalists for their PhotoEssays. Dixon won a "Best of Contest" medal for her PhotoEssay entry, titled "Eyes."
The students’ award-winning work are examples of what can happen when students embrace 21st century skills and an exciting educational challenge. More about these extraordinary projects can be found at http://uwtrio.org.
TRIO students from around the country participated in one or more of three web activities in a national competition called TRIO Quest: Media Quest, PhotoEssay, and TRIO Sites. All three activities are open to all college and pre-college TRIO programs. Media Quest allows individuals or teams of 2-6 students to submit an audio or video on a topic of choice. The PhotoEssay competition is an individual competition and requires students to create written material that is enhanced by images they took and manipulated for the web. TRIO Sites requires an individual or teams of 2-6 students to research information, write, and create educational web sites.
TRIO Quest was first funded by the Department of Education to encourage TRIO students and programs to begin to master 21st century learning skills. These competitions and all program support are directed by the TRIO Training Program at the University of Washington.
With guidance from more than 500 TRIO staff, over 2000 TRIO students participated in the 2010 TRIO Quest activities. TRIO programs submitted the following for national judging: 81 educational web sites created by over 400 TRIO students, 600 individual PhotoEssays, and over 100 Media Quest activities created by over 300 students. Out of the 81 TRIO Sites, 18 (22%) made it to the final judges for awards; from the 600 PhotoEssays, 30 essays (5%) made it to the final judges. And, 16 (16%) of the Media Quest submissions became finalists in the competition.