An independent panel of multimedia experts will judge all entries using a standard set of criteria, to decide which teams to award first, second and third place to. There is a prize of $500 for first place, $300 for second place and $100 for third place. Prizes will be presented and a showcase of entries will be on display at Monash University Open Day.

What is the Timeline?

As soon as you get a team together and register, you can begin your work.

The first few months should be spent performing investigations on your selected topic. This can involve researching in books, talking to people in the community, conducting surveys, or any other means of information gathering you wish to use. Once you have enough information to plan and organise your website, you can start to design how it will look. As you work through producing the content for the website, regularly check whether you are meeting the criteria - there may be some areas that you could improve.

Your completed website must be submitted to arrive at Monash University by the due date indicated, to allow time for judging before the winners are announced and presented with their prizes at Monash University Open Day.

Issues Relating to Copyright

The copyright of the work produced by the teams will be owned by the schools/students that produce that material. (This is part of an implicit agreement between the teams and Monash for every team which enters the competition). However, the use of copyrighted materials by the teams must be in accordance with Australian and Victorian law. In general, the use of any published sound recordings, published written work, photographs, and information from the Internet are copyright works, and cannot be directly used to produce your web site. Such materials may be used in forming an understanding of the topic area, but you will need to express this understanding in your own words.

One way to avoid copyright issues is to obtain information yourself. For example, conduct interviews with local people, take photographs with a digital camera (or scan printed photographs that you have taken with an analogue camera). Furthermore, such materials will then belong to your school, and the copyright will be owned by your school.

The University Lawyer has advised the competition organising committee of details pertaining to copyright. A letter will be sent to all entrants with your welcome kit, explaining that Monash will not be held liable for any infringing material contained within the web sites, which we are simply hosting for the convenience of entrants.

What Information can be Included in the Web Sites?

Your web sites should contain factual information about your topic. This is why you will need to perform some research about the topic area, so that you know about the topic. Any statement you make that is not supported by fact is most likely to be an opinion. In such cases, you need to make clear that it is an opinion. You will also need to be careful that your web site is not defamatory. When people express opinions, sometimes these opinions can be judged defamatory by someone else, which could lead to a law suit.

What Tools can be Used?

You are encouraged to use whatever tools you feel will make your entry be the most outstanding. For instance, you may choose to use Java applets, Java-script, Macromedia Flash, style-sheets to enhance the site. Authoring tools such as Microsoft FrontPage which help manage the development of a site are also fine. However, we will not allow server-based scripts (including CGI programs and servlets). There is also no reason to require a visitor-counter for your site.

Limits on the Maximum Size of the Web Site

Sites should try to be under 10Mb. If they are much larger, you may need to consider what is taking up so much space? The size of graphics and audio files can vary dramatically depending on the file format used. Also, some web-page authoring tools generate HTML code that has extraneous information that consumes space. The larger your site is, the longer it will take for users to view it.

How to Submit a Team's Final Entry

Transfer the entire website onto a DVD or CD and contact Tina.Howe@infotech.monash.edu.au for mailing instructions.

For Further information

If your question has not been answered by the above, please send an inquiry to the competition coordinator Tina.Howe@infotech.monash.edu.au. Whenever questions relating to the running of the competition are asked that may be of interest to all participants, the answers will be placed onto this page, and may be sent by email to the team leader. You should check here regularly to see if there is any new information added (the bottom of this page shows the date this page was last updated).