Web site whiz kids from Japan, Sweden and Canada win first AT&T Virtual Classroom Competition TOKYO, JAPAN - They come from an Inuit reservation in Canada, a small town on the southern tip of Japan and a rural school west of Stockholm, Sweden. At first glance, these middle school students who collaborated over the Internet for the last three months don't seem to have much in common. But together they designed the Web site that won the first AT&T Virtual Classroom Competition. "It is great to see how effectively kids this age can use the Internet to overcome the challenges of language, culture and time zones," said Darryl E. Green, president of AT&T Jens in Tokyo. "The professionalism and creativity of the Web pages these students designed really bowled us over." AT&T Jens, a joint venture between AT&T and 25 leading Japanese corporations, provides businesses with advanced communications services and was the first commercial Internet service provider in Japan. It also operates a powerful, high-bandwidth Internet backbone network with direct, high-speed access to the United States and other countries in Asia/Pacific. AT&T Jens launched the AT&T Virtual Classroom program last year to encourage computer literacy, and online creativity and collaboration, among school children. This first competition challenged 54 "virtual teams" of students to design Web sites based on a topic of their choice. The three-school teams included 55 classes in 47 Japanese schools and one class each from 107 schools in 29 other countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. For the last three months, each team has exchanged design ideas, feedback and information about their projects and themselves. The top three Web sites were chosen last month by a panel of six judges headed by Professor Haruhisa Ishida of the University of Tokyo. In addition to evaluating content and design, the judges considered the degree of collaboration and co-operation among members of the teams. In addition to AT&T Jens, the corporate sponsors for the AT&T Virtual Classroom initiative included the Hotel New Otani, Japan Airlines, Uchida Yoko Co. Ltd., White Pine Software, Inc. and NTT International Corp. "I'm a true believer in the power of the Internet to create communities of interest," said JoAnn Patrick-Ezzell, president of AT&T Online Services -- Asia/Pacific, and one of the competition judges. "With this program we've seen exceptional collaboration and teaming from start to finish -- from students, teachers, school administrators, the AT&T Jens team and our fellow sponsors of the AT&T Virtual Classroom."