This message is intended for the teacher facilitators who will administer the olympiad at their high schools. If you are a parent, please contact me a.s.a.p. so that I can get a hold of the actual teacher. In that case you don't need to worry about the rest of the message. Before the contest, please do the following: 1. If you have not reserved a room for the competition, do it now. If you have reserved a room, confirm your reservation. Just for clarification, the room in which the Feb 5 competition is to take place must be reserved for at least three and a half hours, inclusive of the advertised start and finish times for your time zone. This will allow you time to welcome the students, thank the sponsors and local volunteers, read the rules, etc. as well as distribute and collect the contest booklets. The students should have exactly three hours to actually work on the booklets. Please let us know if this presents a problem for you. 2. Make sure that your room is big enough. Based on the number of students registered so far, estimate how many students will participate. Your room should be big enough for the participants to spread out so that they cannot see each other's papers. In Pittsburgh, the plan is to seat them in an auditorium in every other seat, every other row, so only one quarter of the seats are filled. Use your own judgment about what is best at your location. 3. Make sure that the room has desks. The students need a writing surface. Our room in Pittsburgh has only little wings on the arms of the chairs, but students are spread out so they can use more than one. You may get more winners at your location if they are more comfortable! 4. Make sure that the room has an internet connection. You will use the internet connection to communicate with the jury (naclo08jury@umich.edu) during the competition. (In order to make sure that all participants get the same information, all questions must be sent by email to the address above). 5. Schedule facilitators/invigilators (those are proctors, but since this isn't an exam, we call them facilitators or invigilators). Use your judgment about how many facilitators you will need. There should be at least one person in the room with the participants at all times to take questions and make sure that nobody breaking any rules. Additional rules are posted under "RULES" on the NACLO web site. 6. Make sure that you have the registration numbers assigned to each student. Please contact us the day before the event to obtain the final roster of registered students for your site. The competition day will go something like this: 1. The previous evening: the jury will send you the problem booklet by email. You will need to print it, make sure the fonts and logos are all clear, and make enough copies for the participants at your site. 2. The students should be in the room 15 minutes prior to the official starting time. The contest times are as follows: 9 AM - noon Pacific 10 AM - 1 PM Mountain 9 AM - noon Central 10 AM - 1 PM Eastern 3. We would like to ask all site coordinators (teachers) to email us the exact starting time on the day of the contest so that we can keep track of all sites. For example, if the designated starting time for the contest in your time zone is 10 AM, please make sure to have all students ready (after you have handed them the problem sets) at 10 AM. If for some reason you start a few minutes late (but not more than 15 minutes late), please make sure to give the full three hours of contest time to the students. So, in your email to naclo08jury@umich.edu, as soon as the students have started working on the problem set, please say something like this: "Kevin Smith at PS 45, Milwaukee, WI - start time 09:04, end time 12:04, participating: 5 students". 4. Seat the students far apart. Use your judgment. 5. Check your internet connection and make sure that you are in touch with the jury. You should expect emails sent to you throughout the contest. Please make sure that you monitor your email at all times. 6. Make a welcoming speech and read the rules, which we will give you, fifteen minutes before starting time. Make sure that students know ahead of time that they will need to be seated fifteen mintutes before the starting time. 7. Give out the contest booklets and tell the students to start exactly at the starting time. Have some scrap paper on hand too. 8. When students raise their hands for questions, go to them in order to make sure that they don't blurt out a clue or an answer. Tell the student that you will convey the question to the jury. Do not answer the question even if you think it is simple or obvious. Last year in Pittsburgh a hint was inadvertently dropped by a facilitator who didn't realize that he was giving something away. (Maybe Amy Troyani, our school liaison, can send some advice on handling questions.) 9. Let students out one at a time to use the bathroom. 10. Insist on pencils down exactly at the ending time. 11. Collect contest books. Make sure that all students have written their names and registration numbers on each page before separating the pages. 12. Split the books into individual problems: Problem A, etc. 13. Send by priority mail each set to a different address. Addresses will be provided before the contest. We will need to receive the booklets no later than Friday morning, February 8 so it is imperative that you send them on the day of the contest. 14. Instructions about the second round will be sent out separately, assuming one or more students from your site qualify for it. Check this site: http://www.naclo.cs.cmu.edu and this one: http://www.naclo.cs.cmu.edu/admin/files for additional information Dragomir Radev, jury chair and team coach Lori Levin and Tom Payne, NACLO co-chairs -- Dragomir R. Radev Associate Professor SI, CSE, Ling U. Michigan, Ann Arbor http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~radev radev@umich.edu