Summer Test Exchange OPPORTUNITY!!

Every coach wants to know how to best prepare their participants for competing at the highest level. Each year there is a SciOly Summer Study Exchange. Here, students make up "sample" tests and submit them for evaluation, and if accepted, the student will then be "granted access" for seeing - and using - all tests made by students over the summer. Here is the link for this program  https://scioly.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=335&t=17872

In addition, many teams also participate in the Captain's Summer Exchange. I just received this email from one of the organizers and think it would be a great opportunity to take part in over the summer to keep your kids "SciOly busy"! Here is the entire message I received (with the link for the Google Sheet at the bottom). If you have questions, please do not hesitate to ask me!

We're the Mason Middle School Science Olympiad captains, and we'd like to share a SciOly opportunity for your students and team members with you.

Hope quarantine and summer have been treating you well! As the logistics of next year's SciOly situation are finally coming together, we wanted to reach out to our fellow Division B teams to present an opportunity to kick off the season for returning team members.

As you may know, the Division C (high school) network of student captains has run a 'Captain's Summer Exchange' for the past few years, with great success -- the program has managed to collect multiple high school level tests for each event easily. Last year, Mason MS and Orlando Science MS began an almost identical exchange, but for Division B specifically.

Unfortunately, those previous attempts to make this Division B Exchange haven’t been so successful, in large part to the wide gap in connected-ness between the worlds of Division C leadership and Division B—many middle school programs don’t have captains, and we lack the strong network that high schoolers across the country have.

Because of this, we’ve pivoted to a much more open approach -- we’re still collecting tests exclusively for Division B but to overcome the issues listed before, we’ll accept tests from anyone willing to write! This means any member of Science Olympiad can participate.

Please do what you can to spread the word by telling others in the Science Olympiad Community (team members, friends, other teams you're acquainted with, etc.)! As shown before, advertising and getting the message spread is a top priority, so any help you can offer is greatly appreciated! The deadline to write tests (just one minimum) is September 19th, so hopefully, this gives enough time for an ample amount of tests to be submitted. If you are so kind as to participate, feel free to sign up on the sheet! And of course, don’t stress yourselves out on this—we’re not asking for top-tier quality—just a solid collection of tests to be used for the Division B Olympians.

Please forward this email and the signup link below to your middle school/junior high team, or middle school SciOly teams you are in contact with from running invitationals, so the exchange can be as successful as possible.

We hope you have an amazing season despite the unforeseen circumstances!

 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FP3bLooSZ2A7eByipISNORysUjlPrJPrSyR-fEuJZJg/edit#gid=0 

 The clinic will be held virtually this year. Attendees will receive short videos on 10/23 to watch at your convenience. On Saturday, 11/6, live online Q&A sessions will be held so you can get your questions answered by PA State Event Supervisors. The clinic is open to coaches from any state. The clinic will cover all Division B and Division C events (except no trial events will be covered).

The Q&A sessions will run in 2 parallel sessions, one for Division B events and one for Division C events, that way you do not have to miss any sessions for one division.

The focus of each presentation is to clarify the rules and how to prepare your team for competition at tournaments for 2021-2022. The videos will be made by the PA State Event Supervisors.

The cost of the clinic is $50. PA State Event Supervisors may attend for free.

For more info, contact Dave Moyer at dmoyer@pascioly.org.

The deadline to register is 10/23. Links for each video will be emailed to all attendees on 10/23. Links to the Q&A sessions will be sent by 11/5. Act 48 credit will be available for attendees and presenters. 

When our school began Science Olympiad in 2015, our team had never heard of test “trading”. In fact, we never even knew there were tests available with or without trading. In fact, we only really learned about the practice of test trading when I attended the Science Olympiad Summer Institute of 2018. It was there I met another coach who was generous enough to open his “library” of tests on his Google drive that he had traded with other schools in other states. He had quite a library and with that library, our students were then able to meet up with other students/schools from across the country and begin sharing or trading tests.

To be honest, at first I was a bit skeptical and actually wrote a piece on scioly.org stating my desire to do away with the practice altogether. But as I came to learn, all the top teams across the country had formed hundreds of relationships where they were actively sharing/trading tests, mainly from invitational competitions that they would never possibly be able to attend. For example, here in NY, many teams attend some of the top local invitationals that someone in say, Texas, would never be able to attend. So if students from a school here in NY meet up with students online from Texas - and the Texans have attended invitationals that our New Yorkers would never attend - they trade their tests.

I understand that if your school does not “trade” or “share” tests with other schools, you might feel it puts you at a disadvantage - and you would be right! It is the same disadvantage your Living Environment or Earth science students would have if their teachers were not preparing them at the end of the school year by using old Regents exams. New York currently posts online Regents exams dating back to the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. Now the question becomes, “Isn’t this cheating?” While it took me a while to come to terms with the idea of test trading, I now believe the answer is no. It is not cheating and it is not unethical. In fact, if you are not using old invitational tests to study from your team will be competing at a decided disadvantage. Is it cheating for medical students to study prior MCAT exams that are posted online? Or for law students to study LSATs that are posted online. And how about those NYS Regents test-takers downloading tests from the 60’s? So, here is the answer. Test trading is not cheating. Many invitational locations actually post their examinations! Trading tests is not illegal and if your team is not using these exams to prepare, you will be competing at a decided disadvantage. We simply cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube. [The only caveat here is if a particular SciOly invitational school (such as Harvard) requests that you do not share the tests, then do not share these tests.]

Is there another way to find/study/trade tests? There are three:

1. If you are on the scioly.org website (and your teams should be registered and on it every day!) you have seen there is a menu at the top that includes a “Test Exchange” section https://scioly.org/tests/. Test here go back a few years. While some of the information changes from year to year (A & P or some builds), many of these tests are virtually identical to the previous year (Crime Busters, Road Scholar, etc.…) Have your team members register on scioly.org and start studying with these exams.
2. There is also a similar scioly.org WIKI section https://scioly.org/wiki/index.php/Test_Exchange_Archive Dig in and get started!
3. And finally, there is one more method of accumulating tests that is becoming very popular. It is called the “make your own team tests and share them with any other teams across the country” approach. Over the summer, scioly.org (such a great site for us!) ran a Summer SciOly Study Session (SSSS) where if you wrote a test, and it was accepted by them, they would give you access to ALL the tests that ALL other students submitted to the SSSS. This is available for teachers as well. I submitted an A&P test and have had access to all tests for the past month. The bigger benefit from this is that if your test is not “up to par” they will give you an extremely detailed response telling what needs to be done to make your test “invitational” ready! (A couple of our kids wrote tests they told them were considered “national” level. Start this as soon as possible!) And by writing their own tests, the students gain a better understanding of the material and will do better in competition. I also think I heard that scioly.org will be having another “test writing” forum in the fall. Watch for it!

I will speak more about test sharing/trading when we meet at this year’s coach’s meeting at the beginning of January, but until then, please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions you may have about this critical “need to be in it to win it” approach to SciOly prep! And start researching old tests today!

Once again, my #1 goal this year is to see one of our great NYC teams head to the National competition (Yes, virtual). To get there, we need to do what other cities and schools - who make it to Nationals every year - are doing. This is a big step moving forward!