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This newsletter contains
important time-sensitive updates,
please read it carefully!
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Happy Holidays from the Alliance!
You can still get in touch with us over the holidays and during adjudication via phone and email. When sending emails, please include both Daniel and Alexis to ensure a prompt response.
Please note that the Alliance office is closed December 24-25 and December 30-January 1.
As we approach the Scholastic Awards' 100th anniversary, we are beginning to plan strategically for another century of quality programming. On the table now are important conversations about technology, regional coverage, and raising submission fees to ensure local programs are sustainable.
Finally, we've packed a lot of really important information in this email, so please review it carefully!
Best wishes,
Daniel Embree
Director, National Programs |
Alexis Almeida
Associate Manager, Affiliate Partner & Program Services
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Adjudication and the Charge to the Jury
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The
Charge to the Jury presentation is an opportunity to inform jurors about the adjudication process and the Scholastic Awards criteria. We have prepared a basic
PowerPoint that you can adapt for your region in the Affiliate Resource Site.
Virginia McEnerney has also recorded a video,
A Message to Our Jurors, asking jurors not to make assumptions about the students whose works they are reviewing or to let their personal opinions and biases affect their judging.
Please share this video with all jurors before regional adjudication.
Reminder
:
The deadline to finalize all regional awards in ORS is
January 22, 2019
.
Helpful Hint: When you are adjudicating a
rt panels and you need to step away from the computer to take a break, always close and save the panel first!
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Status notifications have been improved in student and educator dashboards to more clearly identify the status of each work during the submission process and what the student needs to do to complete their submission.
If you'd like to hide these individual notifications, you can replace them with a generic custom message. This might be useful if you are getting lots of inquiries about the status of individual forms or payments.
To replace dashboard status notifications with a generic message, go to your Regional Settings page and open the Options tab. Check the box to enable a custom message of your choosing, for example: "Judging is currently underway! Awards will be announced on February 1, 2019."
This message will replace all individual status messages in the student and educator dashboards.
Students will still be able to access submission forms and payments.
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We've introduced new Scanotron features to help you process submissions. Many Affiliates are reporting that the browse button is sometimes causing an error that we haven't been able to solve.
Instead of using the browse button, try setting parameters and using the search function. For example, you can set the search to include works where the Processing Status is Not Processed, the Payment Status is Paid by Paypal, and the Submission Form Status is Digital:Uploaded to quickly process works that have been successfully digitally uploaded.
To repeat a search more quickly, copy the URL after you hit search. You can paste this URL directly into the browser to pull up the search results immediately without having to re-select the parameters in the drop down menu.
In the coming year, we will refine and improve these new features!
Helpful Hint:
If you are having trouble finding a work, it may be because the work was disabled. You can search for disabled or eliminated works from the Works page, just be sure to highlight disabled and eliminated in the work status drop down menu. When you find the work, you can click Enable to activate the work.
Please be sure the work wasn't intentionally disabled by the student before you enable it again.
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To comply with the updated Participation Terms, students had to check a box when creating a new account indicating that they were at least thirteen years old. For each individual work that was created, students and/or educators had to again check a box indicating that the student was at least thirteen years old.
As a final precaution to ensure students are eligible, there is a new first step in the pre-judging task list. Step one requires that you
disable works for students whose birthday indicates they are less than thirteen years old.
If a work is removed from judging because the student is too young, they are not automatically notified that their work will not be judged.
Note: If a student has put an incorrect birthday in their profile that indicates they are underage, this will disqualify them. If you don't know the correct birthday, you can simply remove the incorrect birthday from their profile to include their works for judging.
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Finalizing Writing Panels
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Important update about writing adjudication: When you finalize your writing panels, please adjust the thresholds for each panel to assign Gold Keys to about 5-7% of works, Silver Keys to about 7-10% of works, and Honorable Mention awards to 10-15% of works in the panel.
Over the past few years, the percentage of writing submissions receiving a Gold Key has fallen below 7%. To adjust for this, we have changed the default settings to make writing panels more generous. When judges complete their scoring, the works in each panel are automatically distributed across the awards. This default distribution is a starting point, but you may need to manually adjust the awards distribution for each panel!
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If you must extend your deadline because of weather or other emergencies, please let us know. Submission deadlines must fall between December 1, 2018-January 9, 2019.
Please make sure all dates are updated in Regional Settings, including your adjudication, ceremony, and exhibition dates. It's important for us to know when these events are taking place so that we can schedule additional staff support and travel. It also helps our customer service team answer student and educator questions.
There was some contradictory information about when the National Awards will be announced, and we apologize for the confusion.
National Notification Day will be
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
, however, we will post the list of National Medals
on March 12
at
artandwriting.org
.
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Certificates and Materials
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| Certificates, recognition materials, and 2019 calendars have been mailed out to each Affiliate. If you haven't already received them, you should get them soon! |
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Training Videos and Live Webinar
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(Use the password sch0lastic with a zero instead of an 'o' to view tutorials.)
You may use any audio and microphone connected to your device, or you may dial-in by phone:
Dial-in: 408-650-3123
Access Code: 787-784-573
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The station is immersed in winter, in the kind of cold that makes the world feel distant. Snow gusts through the station, so thick she can scarcely see across the empty train tracks. The wind howls as if in protest, shrilling through the icy surrounding streets. Tapping her foot with impatience, the girl gazes off into the distance with numb fingers.
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IRINA MALYUGINA,
Winter Break (excerpt)
, Flash Fiction. Grade 9, Age 14, Harker Upper School, San Jose, CA.
Charles Shuttleworth,
Educator
.
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