Hi coaches, We are making our final preparations for this weekend. We hope you are excited! It looks like we ended up with 62 B teams!! A few minor updates before teams start to travel.
1.Electronic Copies of Tests Due Today: As of 2:00pm today here are the tests that I don't have yet: CodeBusters - Bernardo Crime - Shively/Gardner Disease - OCSA Fossils - Ladera Vista Herp - JT Meteorology - Carmel Valley Mystery Architecture - Pioneer/Buckley Solar - Iolani Thermo - El Rancho Charter WIDI - Gage/Oak Middle Game On - Kennedy Naked Egg Drop Day/South Point Coaches please relieve my stress and keep my hair from turning grey by getting me the electronic version of these tests today!! 2. Impound and Experimental Design start at 7am. I hope to have all the classrooms open when the gates open at 630am. 3. Still looking for - A photogate timing system for Battery Buggy. Please let me know if you have one we can use.
- A pole to help get stuck wright stuff planes down in the gym. Please let me know if you have one
4. Engineering Event Score Sheets. Below is a link to the electronic score sheets. The team name and numbers have already been inserted in them. Coaches, please help you proctors get familiar with these sheets. We really want proctors to use them. Build Event Score Sheets 5. Self Schedule to end on Friday 5pm Self schedule opened on Tuesday and it seem to run smooth! Last chance to make changes is Friday at 5. After that, I will leave it up to individual proctors to approve schedule changes.
6. There were some last min room changes including EXPD. I have written rooms 502/503/504 for EXPD. EXPD will be run starting at 7am Sharp. The original room on VHS campus was going to be to cramped so we decided to run it in three of the science classrooms. Teams 1-21 will be in room 502, teams 22-38 will be in room 503 and teams 39 - 62 will be split between rooms 504 and 505.
Probably one more update before Friday afternoon but we're getting close!!! Update #3 1/15/19 Hello fellow coaches. You are receiving this email because your school is signed up for the Kraemer Invitational Tournament on January 26th, 2018. Sorry it's been so long since the last update but I promise we have been working diligently behind the scene to make this the best KraemerInvite yet! There is a ton of important information in this email so please read it all the way through.
Event Schedule The event schedule has been updated. We have made a couple adjustments to the Southern California Schedule to accommodate the large number of teams that will be on campus that day. One small worry I have is being able to get through all of the experimental design tests. The idea right now is to run all EXPD teams during impound from 7am -8am. This should give my proctors the entire day to grade EXPD. We have found a room large enough to accommodate on the VHS campus. The name of the room is called the Heritage Hall. See attached VHS map. We will post signs from the Kraemer campus leading your students to the EXPD location but you are going to want to make sure they arrive on campus pretty early to make sure they find the room. Gates to the school will open at approximately 615.Speaking of EXPD, right now I have my EXPD coach and a couple volunteers proctoring. We can definitely use a couple of additional volunteers to help with this one. Please let me know if you have any EXPD coaches who might be able to help. 2. Thermodynamics will be run as self schedule. Spreading students into 6 time slots rather than three will improve the quality of the event. Mystery Architecture will be run as self schedule same reasoning as Thermal. Impound will begin at 7am. We hope to have the rooms unlocked by 645am. Please check the time slots to make sure your students know the correct time to arrive at their events.
Team Numbers It's been an interesting few weeks. We had a number of teams drop, and we have been able to take all of the wait list teams. In fact I think we still have one or two spots open to cap out at 60. If your school is interested in sending an additional team that is not yet registered, we will take additional schools until we hit the 60 mark. The team numbers have shifted yet again. Please double check and make sure you have the most recent information. Self Scheduling Instructions The window for sign up events will open on TuesdayJan 22 at 4:00pm. Sign ups will be done using ESUS. You should have received an email with detailed instructions on how ESUS works. If you did not receive an email this morning, please check your spam folder as sometimes it gets bounced into there. Self schedule will be on a first come first serve basis. If you can't get the time slot that you need before the end of the self schedule time period, you will need to work it out with the proctor on the day of the tournament. This will be out of the tournament directors hand's. Sign ups will close on Friday January 25th at 4pm Parking: Note we have two parking lots on Angelina drive. One is on the corner of Angelina and Alta Vista. The secondary lot is further down Angelina towards Chapman. Once the main lot fills you will need to find spaces in the surrounding neighborhoods. There are student parking lots located off Bradford avenue that can also be used. Please respect our neighbors and their driveway access and follow all normal parking codes. Use the upper parking lot for loading and unloading. Staging Area Please plan on setting up your base camps on the PE blacktop. Unfortunately we do not have the resources to be able to provide home base classrooms this year. The following is a link to the Kraemer Campus Map.
Forms: There are two required forms attached to this email. The first is a photo release form. This year we will be having another slide show in between the last event and the awards. We have two photographers that will be taking pictures throughout the event. Photographers have been ask to take action shots and videos. They have been instructed not to take close up pictures of students devices. The official photographers will have official press passes. The second is a student release form.
Awards Ceremony We have a committee that is working very hard to prepare an great award ceremony! So far, the timeline looks something like this: 430 - 500 Orchestra 500 - 520 Jazz Band/Kraemer Dance Team 520 - 540 slide show with photos throughout the day 545 - 645 awardsceremony Trial Event Don't forget that we will be running "Game On" and Naked Egg Dropas trial events. These will also be run in the first 3 time slots on a first come, first serve basis.
Needs 1. Looking for an extra sand loading device for towers. We currently have one, we are looking for two more. If your school has one that they might be able to bring please send me an email. 2. Looking for 3 sets of photogate timers for Battery Buggy. If your school has photogate timers that they might be able to bring please send me an email.
Test Copies Please send me a copy of your test and answer key by Wednesday Jan 23. This way we will have enough time to organize the folder and make sure it is ready to distribute the day after the event! Your team will not receive access to the event folder until we have received your contributions! Other than that, I am guessing there will be one or two last minute emails with updates next week.
Update #2 12/11/18 Hello Coaches! Sorry for the long time in between updates but with a new baby, time is becoming very limited. Rest assured we have an excellent team in place that has been working hard to prepare for an amazing 2019 tournament. 1. Updates: There have been several updates to the tournament website. Please click here to view the tournament website. Team numbers have shifted slightly please take note of the shift. There are still a couple teams I have yet to receive payment from. As much as I would like to be lenient on this, I need to get each team's payment by January 8th. If not, I reserve the right to move teams from the waitlist into those positions. Please view the most up-to-date team list to check if I have received payment. As much as I want to include everyone, I am unable to add additional teams. 2. Proctoring:Please make sure the event your team has been assigned has a good proctor who is working hard on their test. See proctor information below. We have two schools running, Boomilever, Roller Coaster, and Battery Buggy since they will be tough to run with the high number of teams; look for a coordination email as a follow up to this email with contact information from both coaches. Not one team registered to proctor Experimental Design, and with 65 or so registered teams, I understand why. Kraemer will host this event, but I can use another school to help out. If you think your school can help proctor EXPD, please email me and I will let you know the details. Because EXPD is a really tough one to grade, we decided that it would be best to run this event for all 65 teams during impound. That way we will have plenty of time to make sure everything is graded by the end of the day. Experimental Design will be run from 7am - 8am in the VHS cafeteria. Please make arrangements for your EXPD team. More to come on that in future email updates.
3. Trial Events:So far Kennedy has volunteered to run Game on. It will be run as self schedule "medal only" event. With so many team and each school only running one event, we have a unique opportunity to host a few trial events. Please take a look at the following spec sheets and please let me know if you think your school could host one of these events. For those coaches who are new to trial events, any student from your school can compete in these events; they do not have to be a member of your team. They do not count towards the team scores but the top six places will get an individual medal. Only one pair of students per team can compete.
4. Contact Information: I need all coaches to reply to this email with answers to the questions below.
To help me with my preparations, please reply to this email and answer the following questions, numbered as they are here: Team name(s) - to help me determine who is getting and reading these emails! Which event(s) are you proctoring? (double check against the list on website) The event proctor(s) name and cell phone. Do you expect to be bringing in food for lunch, visiting our food truck vendors or both? Is your team staying at a hotel? If so which one?
Self Schedule Events We anticipate the window for sign up events will open on Friday Jan 18 at 345pm and will stay open until Thursday Jan 24 at 345pm. I will add the link to the sign up page and also send it out via this email group… first come first served for the slots as always. More information on self scheduling to come in future emails
COACHES- PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO YOUR EVENT PROCTORS
To All Event Proctors:
Hi, my name is Shaun Evola, I am the director for this year's Jan 9th Kraemer Science Olympiad tournament. The purpose of this email is to give directions, info, assistance etc to help you with your event proctoring duties at the tournament. Please read and don't hesitate to email me at [email protected] with questions, concerns, or equipment needs.
1. First off… thank you for volunteering to run an event, we can't hold these tournaments without teams running an event or two.
2. Remember that you are responsible for running the event your team has been assigned. That means writing the test, the key, doing the grading of all tests, reporting results to the scoring room, and preparing all needed materials. If you feel like you would like another school to help you proctor an event, please ask sooner than later, so that I can make the arrangements.
3. All proctors need to provide the score keeper with a digital copy of your test and key or final spreadsheet for build events. Digital copies need to be sent to me prior to the event. Please send a PDf VERSION OF YOUR TEST AND A SEPARATE PDF OF YOUR ANSWER KEY to me by FridayJanuary 18. This will allow our team to gather all tests and put them either on a flash drive or a google drive so that all coaches will have access and can take back to their teams. It is Standard practice for all teams to send copies of the test and key and also their graded tests.
4. Please check in to the scoring room (803) at least 1 hour before the scheduled start of your event. We need to make sure you are present and prepared. My biggest worry on the date of the tournament is an event that ends up not happening due to a missing proctor.
5. Please be sure to write ORIGINAL tests. If you pull something off the internet or from a book, chances are the kids and coaches will have seen it before. Piecing together chunks of several tests doesn't work either, the kids that have seen those tests will have an unfair advantage. I suggest you have a mix of very easy questions, medium questions and very hard questions… some teams/ kids are brand new to this and others have lots of experience and training. ** I strongly suggest a hard copy test (that you collect at the end of the testing period) with a separate answer sheet for grading to facilitate the ease of scoring and administering the test. This is often the model that is used at national competitions and very large tournaments such as ours.
6. Plan for 65 total teams as far as copies and grading go. You may want to look at multiple choice type questions for some of the more difficult events to grade such as Anatomy. We can only do copies in an emergency situation, please bring your own stack. ( test copies that are used over for testing periods with separate answer sheets can help minimize printing and optimize ease of grading and scoring) Excel programs on Scioly Wiki are recommended for scoring build events.
7. Be sure to have a clear key for your test, and bring several copies so the helpers you bring can assist in grading.
8. Make sure you line up several helpers from your team to help with your event. For study events, I usually suggest 1 proctor and 4 helpers. For build events, 1 proctor and 4-5 helpers is good.
9. All tests/ scoring needs to be completed and reported to room 803 (scoring room) as soon as possible. For those of you with later event blocks, plan accordingly to get the grading done quickly.
10. We are using the Tri-block system so you will have 3 blocks of kids coming to see you for testing events, back to back to back, 20 teams each. That means for events with materials to set up, you'll need 20 stations minimum.
11. Yes we will have a scantron machine available and blank scantrons if you want to use it for a multiple choice test or section of a test. 12. The hospitality room will be available for grading. 13. Kraemer volunteers will bring you occasional beverage choices and snacks. 14. If you have special equipment needs or want to know the layout of the room, just ask. 15. Fairness is key… whatever you do with your first group of testers, do it the same way with the second group. Be sure to treat your own team no more or less strict than any others. 16. Do NOT allow parents or coaches or other kids into closed door testing rooms to observe. 17. You are responsible for breaking all ties. Be sure to have a tie breaker question, check the rules as there is often a tie breaker system… there will be ties and they can't be input into the system that way. Multiple tie breaker questions that are challenging can often assist to distinguish placement on tests that have closely spaced scores. 18. For engineering/ sign up events… teams will be selecting time slots online the Monday before the competition. I will provide you with a schedule of what teams are slotted for what times when you check in in the am. Please follow this schedule. You are allowed to add in extra teams into blocks of time if there is room but you should honor the signed up teams first. Feel free to start early if you like. 19. As far as being strict on build events. It is your call. Most important is that you are fair across all teams. If you choose to issue warnings for something like "goggles on forehead" instead of a penalty that is fine with me, just be consistent. 20. For engineering events… placement into the various tiers is your call, but again be consistent. For example, if on bridges or say gliders if you decide that 1 mm off on a measurement is not enough to be placed into a lower tier that is fine as long as you do it the same for all teams. 21. If any parents or coaches or kids are being unsportsmanlike or hassling you about a judgment call. Please let me know and I will deal with it. 22. The national webpage has useful documents and files to help with running events… for build events they often have scoring spreadsheets available. Be sure to have a copy of your rules available.. And remember the kids will know the rules better than the adults, be ready for their questions.
update 1 11/15/18 Hello, fellow Coaches! You are receiving this email because your school is signed up for the Kraemer Invitational Tournament on January 26th, 2019. Here are the latest updates regarding the Kraemer Invitational: 1) Tournament Website: The tournament website has been updated. See theKraemerInvitational link for the latest information. 2) Registration: We currently have 65 teams registered. We are officially sold out with additional teams on a wait list. This will be pretty close to the biggest “B” level we have hosted. If circumstances change and you cannot make our invitational, please let us know ASAP so we can get in schools that we do not have room for right now. I have attached a spreadsheet that shows payments that we have received. If, for some reason, your 2nd or additional team cannot compete, please let me know so that I can replace them with teams from the waiting list. 3) Proctor Assignments and Team Numbers: The teams, team numbers, are up on the invitational website. See above for link. We have not given out event assignments yet. We will send out more instructions about events at a later date. We will try to honor most schools' top three event requests. We will have two schools running Experimental Design, Anatomy, Towers, Roller Coaster, and Battery Buggy since they will be tough to run with the high number of teams; we will be sending out contact information to those schools soon so you can coordinate to run those events. If you end up in charge of an event and think that you’ll need an additional school to help, please send me an email. We want to ensure all events will finish grading on time, a challenge with so many teams. We’d like to be as timely as possible in announcing our results. If you have multiple teams attending and are only being asked to proctor one event, we will ask that you consider running a trial event. Recently I was able to see several trial events in person including: Indoor Bottle Rocket, Naked Egg Drop, Picture This , We've Got your Number Please look over these events and see if there is one that you believe your school could run, and let us know if you are interested. We will then contact the appropriate people and get the official permission to run the event. Assuming all that works out, we will contact you. This process has to be relatively quick so we can order the correct number of medals and teams can have a sufficient amount of time to work on the "new" events. If not a trial event, we would ask that your 2nd team(s) help run the invitational by providing volunteers to help run some of the more difficult to grade events (events that take longer to grade) so the event supervisor can be grading while the second and third hours of that event are going on. We are also looking into a way to ask for parent volunteers (we are working on the logistics of this but providing parent volunteers will be optional for schools, not mandatory); we are hoping this assistance will allow us to start the awards ceremony on time and get everyone out of here earlier.
4) Regional registration: It is a National Science Olympiad rule that all teams competing in any invitational be registered with their local region. Teams and invitationals that violate this rule are subject to severe consequences including not being able to compete at any level, so we will be enforcing this rule. We will be checking with your regional/state director starting December 1st. Please try to ensure your team(s) is/are registered by then. Teams that we cannot confirm registrations for will not be able to compete.
5) Engineering sign ups: Sign ups will be done on-line, and the date is still being determined, but we are looking at the second week of January. We will send out the date, time, and method when we have determined all the details.
6) Schedule: Invitational schedule will follow the Southern California state schedule which can be found at this link:State Schedule. In effort to spread out as many kids as possible we will run Density lab, Mystery Architecture, and Thermodynamics as self schedule events. We are also looking for a big classroom to run all Disease Detectives during impound time. Stand by for more info on that.
**Note, Southern California has replaced Game On with Code Busters. We will follow suite for our tournament. However we will also run Game On as a Medal Only event. That way schools who are interested in Game On can still get the experience and practice. We are looking for 2 schools to proctor Game On. 7) Schedule conflicts: Since we have a number of first time teams and coaches, event conflicts are part of Science Olympiad and will occur at basically every tournament that you compete in. There is nothing we can do about that. In our experience, these conflicts allow students to try new events and have often resulted in very positive outcomes as students learn they enjoy a different subject (granted, other times it results in students confirming they don't like the new subject, but at least it is now an informed distaste). We encourage all coaches to work with their teams to determine the best way for you to handle the conflicts. 8) Hotels: For teams that are interested in securing hotel rooms for the Invitational, please contact me for a list of recommended hotels. 9) Homerooms: Unfortunately, teams will not be provided homerooms. Please plan on camping out somewhere on campus. In case of rain, there are many covered walkways available. When you set up your “campsite” please keep a portion of the walkway clear for people to get by. As we try to do with all updates, a copy of this update can be found on the website. Looking forward to having your team at the KraemerInvitational Tournament. Please email me if you have any questions or concerns!