The Quizbowl Resource Center

alexdz

Can you clarify the date of this event? Your post here says April 10 but the NAQT site has it on April 24.

[[EDIT: Turns out April 10th is correct, but now the issue is just the wrong NAQT link.]]

alexdz

Big kudos to everyone who organized, staffed, and played this tournament. It was great to see so many young people with so much knowledge. Every team had some clutch buzzes and dove really deep on a few bonuses! Perhaps one of these days a French language tournament would be doable... but for now, w...

alexdz

Just wanted to say my students are *very excited* to have this opportunity tomorrow, so I want to thank everyone in advance for all their hard work. We can't wait to make our debut performance at this event and see what the MS teams of PA have to show off!

alexdz

...the fact that a school is sending 8 teams to a NATIONAL tournament capped at 128 teams... I want to build on this with some additional nuance. Of course, presumably this school was able to qualify 8 teams for the tournament, which is an awesome accomplishment. These students certainly earned a s...

alexdz

Dominator wrote: ↑Mon Jan 18, 2021 9:53 pm When someone pays for the event, they get a registration code. Each player on the team then enters that code on their Qblitz home page to get added to the team.

That's the missing piece! Thanks for clarifying!

alexdz

I'm happy to Venmo my teammate for that part of the logistics. But when my teammate signed up, they said there was no spot to register my name or anything... so I guess I'm confused as to how I'll actually have access to the games if I never "sign up" for the contest on Qblitz since my tea...

alexdz

So, the original announcement lists that the tournament will cost $12 per player. When you log in to Qblitz to sign up, the only option is to register a "team" which costs $24. The math, of course, works out, but how do we sign up as just individuals to pay our portion of the entry fee?

alexdz

Several small local events in Missouri are essentially doing exactly this. I'm not actively there anymore so I don't know a lot of details about how it's being organized, but the spirit is the same -- get through several packets over the course of a week or so, a few each night, and crown a winner b...

alexdz

For as many downsides as there can often be to having quizbowl be an official activity for some statewide organization (EDIT: like a state activities association, not just a quizbowl group) , one of its biggest benefits is that it is more likely that coaches (at least head coaches) are paid, which m...

alexdz

Yeah, one adult supervisor hiding in a classroom is nowhere near the appropriate level of adult supervision for that many middle schoolers. That's horrifying to me, both as an educator and as a reasonable adult person. I don't know what your school experience was like, Rohan, but I've been a teacher...

alexdz

This serves as a reminder that no one is completely immune from unwanted sexual/romantic attention. Like women, LGBTQ+ folks also show statistically higher rates.

alexdz

I'm curious as to why "school approval" would be a necessary precursor for attendance... I've brought this up before in this thread, but for tournaments hosted at K-12 schools, I would have a hard time believing that the host school's administration would be OK with a group of students fr...

alexdz

Coaching resources a big topic of discussion for us at the Missouri Quizbowl Alliance at our meeting this weekend. We'd really like to offer some training sessions for coaches (of all levels of experience) that would be accessible virtually. Local circuits are probably going to be more tied in to co...

alexdz

I went to high school in the era just before good quizbowl happened in Missouri. My entire HS experience was largely on bad-to-mediocre questions, the kind where "learning" more was basically just binary association of title-author or achievement-president. I remember my first few practice...

alexdz

And what is this adult for, anyway? To discipline the perpetrator? To blame when a student commits misconduct? To create a very clear chain of command for reporting and meting out discipline for any issues that may arise. Have a problem with a student on Team X? As soon as possible, speak with Team...

alexdz

I completely agree that having some kind of adult whose presence is sanctioned by the school, be they an official coach or a volunteer school-sponsored chaperone, ought to be a requirement. As others have said, it turns a nebulous situation into one of more clarity -- should one witness a student do...

alexdz

I would be willing to take a lead role in developing a free online training module (or more than one) and helping to manage a database of those who completed it. While I agree that it isn't the be-all-end-all of this situation, it is a concrete place to start and building it can help us as a communi...

alexdz

Something you can consider, that would also help your teammates, is to do little mini-research adventures on topics you discover. So say, for example, you find out about a mythological figure you want to learn more about. Instead of just reading an article about them on your own, put together a slid...

alexdz

I do agree with mostly everything in this post. However looking back at my middle school years I think it would be nice if some schools and experienced writers could team up to write an mACF style MS set to bring more middle schools that cannot afford hosting a tournament based on MS series into th...

alexdz

What about taking the "current events" space and creating subcategories just like we have elsewhere. You could have "government/politics/economy" and "popular culture" subdistributions within current events.

alexdz

This community often does great things. This is one. <3 I don't know if this is relevant in your particular case, Sasha, but you may also want to check with webmasters of any quizbowl organizations (state alliances or sponsoring organizations) to make similar requests for any data they may have host...

alexdz

Just thought of this... what about designating bonuses by half? So not necessarily matching TU 1 - B1, etc., but saying "These are the first half bonuses, 1-10, and these are the second half bonuses, 11-20." In other words, you read bonuses in order as they come, but once the second half s...

alexdz

Hi! I'm a person in Pennsylvania who sometimes works in this capacity. Most people in this community usually call this position a "moderator." One thing you should know is that there are different types of competition in Pennsylvania. The most common you'll encounter from people on this me...

alexdz

Tyler, I think this is a fantastic idea, and I'd like to reflect on and honor a few of my quizbowl mentors. Earl Williamson \ I started playing quizbowl in middle school, but things really took off for me when I joined my high school team, coached at the time by Earl Williamson. Mr. Williamson was t...

alexdz

For the record, the $130 donation to the Trevor Project has been made! I'm sending confirmation to Emily now for her records as well.

alexdz

Alex Dzurick is going to list team national appearances from various states. I wasn't able to work as long as I thought I could on this project today, but I did create some basic tables for a few states. Prior to my work on this project, Missouri and Illinois had pages created for this. My new addi...

alexdz

knitting or fishing Knitting could be "other visual art" and fishing could be sports, wherever that might fit. But the point is that nearly anything GK you could think of would be able to fit in any of these categories, particularly if you widen "literature" to mean more like &q...

alexdz

I've often used lists of things like Newberry and Caldecott award winners, ALA "best of" lists, etc., to get a handle on what "kid lit" books are popular and widely known. I do believe there is room for more than 1/1, but I'd rather see something like 2/2, as there seems to be a ...

alexdz

As someone who writes MS questions a lot, this overall feels like a pretty accessible distribution and one i'd feel good about as an introduction to the game. If anything, I feel like there might be room to expand basic literature just a little bit more. Most myth questions will feel literature-y, s...

alexdz

I don't have any memories of specific questions or opponents from either of my nationals experiences (ACF 2009, ICT 2010). But what I do remember is that these were some of my first experiences to the wider quizbowl community outside of my own region. I was meeting "legends" that I'd only ...

alexdz

Let's just make it a nice even $5 per writer and call it $130.

I'm very pleased to be able to make this contribution on behalf of all the writers who signed up for this!

alexdz

OK, this is a really great idea and a cause near and dear to my heart. I want to encourage folks to participate in writing for this, so I would like to contribute $5 per writer of this set , up to a total of $125. I'm looking at the list right now (~11:15 pm ET, 2/24) and there are 14 writers, plus ...

alexdz

Another consideration to be accounted for, although not impacting a large number of the options, is that some states restrict quizbowl activities in a way that national tournaments cannot be held in that state on certain dates, or at all. There was some mild disgruntlement among the powers-that-be i...

alexdz

I played nearly everything I could get my hands on in high school and was very active in studying and playing. When I got to college, I found that my motivation to practice specifically for quizbowl had dwindled quite a bit. Even though I enjoyed attending practices and helping the team administrati...

alexdz

Like Reinstein, I've also found that the best way to get footholds into new circuits is to first concern one's self with question quality rather than format nuances. Coaches and admins primarily want to know that they're getting usable, well-written questions in the format they're used to. Big chang...

alexdz

Hi Coach Wilson! I've got several Alabama-format middle school sets I'd be happy to provide for your tournament, assuming there's no overlap with the other conferences using them already. Shoot me an email at sagesquizbowl [at] //gmail// dotcom and we can discuss details.

alexdz

Building on several of the suggestions made in this thread, I would repeat a suggestion I've made before that existing and future quizbowl alliances could be good organizations to facilitate some of this work at the state level. I would not suggest adding extra unwanted work on the volunteers alread...

alexdz

It would be great to see more teams/players/alumni band together to help share the burdens of outreach and supporting new teams. I hope that people in these regions like yourself won't ever lack for assistance if you need it from the community on these efforts at both the HS and College levels. Thi...

alexdz

I think some of the nuance in this issue is that not only are people reluctant to admit to their editor they can't finish questions on time, they're reluctant to admit it to themselves, too ("It's fine, I'll just sit down this weekend, crack open a beer, and write them all," which we know...

alexdz

This is a goal I've been trying to achieve somewhat with the SAGES sets I've written. The whole company was inspired by a need for good quality, pyramidal questions for *elementary school* players, and they have been successfully used for middle school tournaments targeting largely newer players or ...

alexdz

I'd love to contribute again, and in fact I've already got a half-packet started and this will be impetus to finish it.

alexdz

FYI, there appears to be a typo/mistake on the college page where "National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics" is repeated twice rather than including USCAA.

alexdz

As someone who formerly worked in sustainability, and in particular energy efficiency, I've also thought about a couple of other ways we as a community can be more environmentally friendly and cut down on our impacts on the climate. Building energy use: As much as is possible, we should do a better ...

alexdz

I'll still be in the Philly area (though I'm moving to the suburbs) and will try to make myself as available as possible to staff events in the area. I also anticipate continuing to teach courses at Harcum College in the fall and will renew my efforts to found some sort of quizbowl team there in add...

alexdz

IIRC, Missouri explicitly prohibits such a thing for any MSHSAA member school, with some minor exceptions for overage students at the 8th grade level. (All multi-subject team-based quizbowl events are subject to MSHSAA's jurisdiction, even beyond the state series.)

alexdz

SAGES has been asked to bid for a JV/novice set to be used for a Missouri conference, but the set would then also be available for many other events (as Missouri format is pretty close to national format now, with a few relatively easy tweaks to the distribution). Supposing this bid is accepted, I'd...

alexdz

My apologies for the lack of official update on the forum post here, but this tournament was canceled due to lack of registrations. Turns out April 27 is not an ideal weekend for an event when most of the eligible schools in the area end their semesters about a week or two later. I'm going to see wh...

alexdz

I think some decrease in physics and a corresponding increase in math would be a good idea in the "standard distribution" for that housewrites & companies use for the high school level. (The problem is only more pronounced in middle school.) As a middle school (and elementary!) writer...

alexdz

We should also work on lionizing people more for their contributions to creating a healthy community than their performance as players. The Missouri Quizbowl Alliance has established a Values Award to do exactly this job. We're honored to give this award each year to a player or players who have be...

alexdz

I just recently sent out another batch of emails and follow-ups to try and recruit more schools to participate in this event. I have a goal in mind of having 6 teams signed up, and while there's another month to go, I'd love to be making more progress toward this goal. If there are any leads you thi...

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