The 'i' in iTest once again means "international"

EDIT: As pointed out to me, the official language of Macedonia is Macedonian! Not Greek. My apologies. Bradley

Back in 2005, the iTest allowed a fairly large school in Warsaw to participate in the competition on a trial basis. We wanted to get a feel for how international schools would deal with a number of issues, probably the biggest of which was handling the exam submission time that was I think 2 AM in the morning for them. This pilot went well and the iTest then knew that international expansion was possible, at least in the high school mathematics realm.

In 2006, we did not have any international schools participate during the competition period, but the positive exposure on a number of foreign internet sites regarding that particular exam helped build credibility abroad.

Officially, the iTest's policy is that while we don't overtly market ourselves to schools internationally, we now feel like we have the operational capacity to allow them to participate, if they so choose. There are no state-level awards for international schools given by the iTest, but students at these schools remain eligible to win the grand prize.

All this is simply leading up to the announcement that we're working with a school this year in Macedonia to provide iTest content to an entire school of around 900 students. This school will have some participating teams in the 2007 iTest when it occurs, and will (like many other schools here in the US) use the exam as an additional component of classroom curriculum at times throughout the year.

I often refer to the iTest as bringing an "open source" approach to education, as we allow our content to be used in a number of ways (all after the competition concludes each year, of course) and to be changed and altered by educators as necessary to conform to a particular school's curricular needs. For example, we heard once about an educator stripping out the first 5 problems of the iTest and giving these problems as 'bonus questions' on a pre-calculus exam. This is the essence of an "open source" mentality - our content is malleable and ready to augment the US educational system in a variety of capacities.

This school in Macedonia, once the iTest is complete, will translate iTest problems into Macedonian (native language) and will focus on specific questions (over the course of the year) across the entire school's mathematics curriculum. They will do with the iTest what they need to do to help their students.

Just another example of the iTest reaching out and serving educational needs, even if they're not here at home.