Florida 2019

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bernard
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Re: Florida 2019

Post by bernard »

jaah5211 wrote:Will you be uploading the circuit lab national exam that you wrote in the drive?
Tests and keys used for the national tournament are property of Science Olympiad, Inc. and cannot be posted to Scioly.org in accordance with Scioly.org Resource Policy and Science Olympiad, Inc. copyright.
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Re: Florida 2019

Post by windu34 »

bernard wrote:
jaah5211 wrote:Will you be uploading the circuit lab national exam that you wrote in the drive?
Tests and keys used for the national tournament are property of Science Olympiad, Inc. and cannot be posted to Scioly.org in accordance with Scioly.org Resource Policy and Science Olympiad, Inc. copyright.
I believe jaah5211 was referencing the UFSO google drive and not the Scioly.org test exchange. Unfortunately, I dont believe I am permitted to do so, but all national exams from a given year are sold on Soinc.org for 10-15 dollars I believe. I am considering making a video in which I would solve each problem on the exam and explain how to reason through them, but this is something I need to speak to some people about first, so no promises.
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Re: Florida 2019

Post by demir »

windu34 wrote:
demir wrote:
windu34 wrote: Working on a March 28th date, but not confirmed yet. It will likely be 1-2 months before a date and location is set (UF or UCF).
March 28 would be fantastic :) How about regional? I hope the regional dates will be closer this year, so we can have more meaningful invitationals for everyone. I pledge at least two middle school invitationals again. It could be even three this year. Not sure about high school, but would like to host one. I sure hope you can host a high school invitational as well.

It was a good year overall for us except "oh we were so close" blues at division C. Looking forward to 2019-2020.
Tentatively, the plan is for UF Regionals to be held on January 18th, 2020, and Florida States to be held at UF on March 28th, 2020.

We will not be hosting an invitational because we will have our hands full planning these two tournaments. We are however looking into opening up our regional tournament to other teams from both within and outside of FL to compete "for fun". They would have to pay an additional registration fee and would not receive medals/trophies and would not be included in the final rankings, but they would be able to come and compete. This is a tentative idea that I would love some feedback on.

If it won't be too much of a hassle, here are some suggestions:

1. Can you prepare 3 separate rankings? Official, unofficial and combined. The "for fun" schools can be ranked among themselves, and we can also see how everyone would compare in combined list, but the official list would be used in award ceremony and determines the placements and state qualifiers.
2. Can we have a separate award ceremony for unofficial teams? It is not easy for many teams to travel (and I don't anticipate too many unofficial teams from Gainesville), so a separate award ceremony would be a fun incentive. I am fairly confident that I can help sponsoring this secondary ceremony, if needed.
3. Can we have a filler activity prior to award ceremony, such as a quiz bowl final, swap meet or a dance off? Something simple and not costly but will keep students entertained and on campus until the ceremony.
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Re: Florida 2019

Post by pepperonipi »

demir wrote:
windu34 wrote:
demir wrote:
March 28 would be fantastic :) How about regional? I hope the regional dates will be closer this year, so we can have more meaningful invitationals for everyone. I pledge at least two middle school invitationals again. It could be even three this year. Not sure about high school, but would like to host one. I sure hope you can host a high school invitational as well.

It was a good year overall for us except "oh we were so close" blues at division C. Looking forward to 2019-2020.
Tentatively, the plan is for UF Regionals to be held on January 18th, 2020, and Florida States to be held at UF on March 28th, 2020.

We will not be hosting an invitational because we will have our hands full planning these two tournaments. We are however looking into opening up our regional tournament to other teams from both within and outside of FL to compete "for fun". They would have to pay an additional registration fee and would not receive medals/trophies and would not be included in the final rankings, but they would be able to come and compete. This is a tentative idea that I would love some feedback on.

If it won't be too much of a hassle, here are some suggestions:

1. Can you prepare 3 separate rankings? Official, unofficial and combined. The "for fun" schools can be ranked among themselves, and we can also see how everyone would compare in combined list, but the official list would be used in award ceremony and determines the placements and state qualifiers.
2. Can we have a separate award ceremony for unofficial teams? It is not easy for many teams to travel (and I don't anticipate too many unofficial teams from Gainesville), so a separate award ceremony would be a fun incentive. I am fairly confident that I can help sponsoring this secondary ceremony, if needed.
3. Can we have a filler activity prior to award ceremony, such as a quiz bowl final, swap meet or a dance off? Something simple and not costly but will keep students entertained and on campus until the ceremony.
I think that these are some good suggestions for the tournament. However, why did you suggest that last third reason? I'm not necessarily against that idea (it sounds fun), but that just seems like something else they would have to plan and it isn't really necessary. As far as I know, activities like that are not really standard for a regional or invitational event and are typically only done at Nationals.

I know at my regional, the SE one, keeping students entertained before awards wasn't really a problem. They'd just talk amongst themselves or go play a sport, like Ultimate.
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Re: Florida 2019

Post by demir »

pepperonipi wrote: I think that these are some good suggestions for the tournament. However, why did you suggest that last third reason? I'm not necessarily against that idea (it sounds fun), but that just seems like something else they would have to plan and it isn't really necessary. As far as I know, activities like that are not really standard for a regional or invitational event and are typically only done at Nationals.

I know at my regional, the SE one, keeping students entertained before awards wasn't really a problem. They'd just talk amongst themselves or go play a sport, like Ultimate.
First of all, anything that can be an incentive for teams, especially out of state teams, to come to UF should be considered. We sorely lack competition practice and I would like teams like Dodgen, FSA, Chattahoochee, Auburn, Piedmont to consider coming to Florida.

Also, many teams that do not hope much from award ceremony leave early and miss out on things. I like them to feel more involved. I will also recommend to state to have most improved, best new comers and spirit award for teams, so every team has something to look forward.

If I learned/confirmed one thing from this year, that is if our schools want to be in top 10 at nationals, we need to make everyone around us better.
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Re: Florida 2019

Post by windu34 »

demir wrote: 1. Can you prepare 3 separate rankings? Official, unofficial and combined. The "for fun" schools can be ranked among themselves, and we can also see how everyone would compare in combined list, but the official list would be used in award ceremony and determines the placements and state qualifiers.
If we end up inviting other schools, yes we will definitely create separate rankings. More likely just two though: Official and Combined.
demir wrote: 2. Can we have a separate award ceremony for unofficial teams? It is not easy for many teams to travel (and I don't anticipate too many unofficial teams from Gainesville), so a separate award ceremony would be a fun incentive. I am fairly confident that I can help sponsoring this secondary ceremony, if needed.
We would not hold a separate awards ceremony for out-of-state teams. We are looking to make significant changes to the quality and setup of our regional and state awards ceremony this year (indoors with an actual stage) and we may even be holding separate B and C ceremonies similar to Cornell due to space constraints.
demir wrote: 3. Can we have a filler activity prior to award ceremony, such as a quiz bowl final, swap meet or a dance off? Something simple and not costly but will keep students entertained and on campus until the ceremony.
Yes we have been discussing filler activities, and there will definitely be something done. In previous years, we didnt have enough staff, but this upcoming year should not be a problem. There will likely be 1 or 2 short speakers, a university representative, and an engaging activity for everyone to partake in. I do like the quiz-bowl style competition where each team would break into 3 teams of 5 students (42*3=126 mini teams per division) and questions ranging across all the events would be tested. The logistics of such a game could be a problem, but I think it would be fun, engaging, and could stall awards a pretty long time (especially since alot of questions would be needed to remove ties with so many teams). We would give some type of award to the top teams in this game.

A few other things we plan to try to provide (hopefully for both tournaments, but def for states) are tours led by our campus ambassador groups, engagement with STEM-oriented student clubs and some UF departments, and opportunities for competitors to speak to current students at UF from a variety of different majors.
On the tournament end (for states especially), our greatest focus will be ensuring quality of the events. Not only will we be reviewing all exams prior to the tournament, we have already started hand-picking event supervisors for some of the events for states and will likely be flying in a handful of supervisors for events that we cannot find qualified people for. We will have a page on our website that displays all of our event supervisors, where they are from, and their qualifications. I think teams will be very pleased with the quality of the ESes at states this year. One thing we learned from last years regionals was that we didnt really need that many UFSO staff to be free during the events - there was alot of downtime and things ran very smoothly. Since we will also have Valerie at states to help mediate issues, I think roughly 75% of our Eboard will be running events at states.

We definitely have big plans for this year's tournaments. Some of this is just me thinking out loud - I have not spoken to the rest of my UFSO team about some of these ideas so no promises, but I definitely welcome any suggestions and feedback.
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Re: Florida 2019

Post by windu34 »

demir wrote: Also, many teams that do not hope much from award ceremony leave early and miss out on things. I like them to feel more involved. I will also recommend to state to have most improved, best new comers and spirit award for teams, so every team has something to look forward.
Definitely a fan of the "most improved" and "best new comers" awards - spirit award not so much
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Re: Florida 2019

Post by jaah5211 »

windu34 wrote:
demir wrote: 1. Can you prepare 3 separate rankings? Official, unofficial and combined. The "for fun" schools can be ranked among themselves, and we can also see how everyone would compare in combined list, but the official list would be used in award ceremony and determines the placements and state qualifiers.
If we end up inviting other schools, yes we will definitely create separate rankings. More likely just two though: Official and Combined.
demir wrote: 2. Can we have a separate award ceremony for unofficial teams? It is not easy for many teams to travel (and I don't anticipate too many unofficial teams from Gainesville), so a separate award ceremony would be a fun incentive. I am fairly confident that I can help sponsoring this secondary ceremony, if needed.
We would not hold a separate awards ceremony for out-of-state teams. We are looking to make significant changes to the quality and setup of our regional and state awards ceremony this year (indoors with an actual stage) and we may even be holding separate B and C ceremonies similar to Cornell due to space constraints.
demir wrote: 3. Can we have a filler activity prior to award ceremony, such as a quiz bowl final, swap meet or a dance off? Something simple and not costly but will keep students entertained and on campus until the ceremony.
Yes we have been discussing filler activities, and there will definitely be something done. In previous years, we didnt have enough staff, but this upcoming year should not be a problem. There will likely be 1 or 2 short speakers, a university representative, and an engaging activity for everyone to partake in. I do like the quiz-bowl style competition where each team would break into 3 teams of 5 students (42*3=126 mini teams per division) and questions ranging across all the events would be tested. The logistics of such a game could be a problem, but I think it would be fun, engaging, and could stall awards a pretty long time (especially since alot of questions would be needed to remove ties with so many teams). We would give some type of award to the top teams in this game.

A few other things we plan to try to provide (hopefully for both tournaments, but def for states) are tours led by our campus ambassador groups, engagement with STEM-oriented student clubs and some UF departments, and opportunities for competitors to speak to current students at UF from a variety of different majors.
On the tournament end (for states especially), our greatest focus will be ensuring quality of the events. Not only will we be reviewing all exams prior to the tournament, we have already started hand-picking event supervisors for some of the events for states and will likely be flying in a handful of supervisors for events that we cannot find qualified people for. We will have a page on our website that displays all of our event supervisors, where they are from, and their qualifications. I think teams will be very pleased with the quality of the ESes at states this year. One thing we learned from last years regionals was that we didnt really need that many UFSO staff to be free during the events - there was alot of downtime and things ran very smoothly. Since we will also have Valerie at states to help mediate issues, I think roughly 75% of our Eboard will be running events at states.

We definitely have big plans for this year's tournaments. Some of this is just me thinking out loud - I have not spoken to the rest of my UFSO team about some of these ideas so no promises, but I definitely welcome any suggestions and feedback.
So is it confirmed that UF is hosting the states for 2020?
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Re: Florida 2019

Post by windu34 »

jaah5211 wrote: So is it confirmed that UF is hosting the states for 2020?
Pretty much - the President of FSO and Valerie (state director) are both willing to let us run it, but I am waiting to ensure that UF admin will give us access to the rooms we need. They have been being unresponsive recently (probably because its summer) and I would like a more definitive "yes" before we fully commit to it. We will post on here and through social media as soon as we officially commit.
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Re: Florida 2019

Post by jaah5211 »

windu34 wrote:
jaah5211 wrote: So is it confirmed that UF is hosting the states for 2020?
Pretty much - the President of FSO and Valerie (state director) are both willing to let us run it, but I am waiting to ensure that UF admin will give us access to the rooms we need. They have been being unresponsive recently (probably because its summer) and I would like a more definitive "yes" before we fully commit to it. We will post on here and through social media as soon as we officially commit.
thank you!
Although having state competitions at UCF was fun, I believe UF will be delivering a higher quality tests and event supervisions!
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