Virtual Fair Update

• All students must upload a presentation file. This presentation file will be reviewed for compliance with our Display Rules, as always. In other words, this replaces the display review that normally takes place at the science fair.
• The presentation should be either powerpoint or a multipage PDF. The upload program has now been modified to accept PDF files as well as PPT and PPTX. Please note that a PowerPoint file submitted must NOT contain either notes or audio: just the slides. This rule is for consistency with the capabilities of a PDF file. You should design the slides in this file for presentation in 10 minutes or less. That means we recommend 10 slides or less. You should summarize the important aspects of the method and results, not everything you did. Details can be given in answer to questions.
• You will use this presentation file during the virtual judging sessions. You will want to prepare carefully for your judging sessions: see http://njrsf.org/njrsf2020/VFjudging.html.
• A recorded presentation is requested, but not mandatory. The recordings will be accomplished by engaging in a web conference with the fair director, where you will share your screen to step through your presentation (on your own device), and talk over those slides to discuss your work. These recordings, along with the submitted presentation files, will become part of a virtual fair, accessible to the public after the judging is complete and the awards are announced. Note that, for this presentation, it is your choice whether to share your image as a thumbnail on the recording of the presentation. Also, the presentation files (non-video) will be released for public viewing only if you give permission on the Supplemental Registration form. We plan to leave this virtual fair in place for at least a few months.
• You can schedule the recording session between this Friday, March 27, and Friday April 3. A total of 70 slots have been allocated for these recordings. You can sign up here for one of these slots. Please do so ASAP if you wish to participate in this aspect of the fair. We will add slots if it becomes necessary.
• The judging both days will take place on a schedule (for each student or team) that will be communicated to you the week of April 12 for the first round of judging.. The format will not be quite what you are accustomed to. You will do a single judging interview with a panel of judges, which will consist of 3 or 4 judges. The interviews will be interactive, meaning you should plan for the presentation to be interrupted, perhaps many times.
• An important exception to this schedule applies to the Computer Science category. Since it is too large to fit into the planned judging format on April 17, we plan to schedule a pre-judging event on April 14 (Tuesday night), to narrow the field down to 10 projects. The schedules for that night of judging will be handled separately, but the format will be similar.
• The time allotted for each presentation will be 15 minutes. You should plan your own presentation to be no more than 10 minutes, to allow adequate time for questions. The judging interviews will NOT be recorded, and we will require that you use a webcam.
• The special award judging will be similar, except that you may have one or several interviews that day. Again the schedule for each student or team will be communicated the week of April 19.
• Awards and certificates will need to be mailed out afterward. We'll do the best we can, but the processing of these shipments will take time: especially since schools are likely to remain closed, meaning that we will have to make individual shipments to each student.

What You Need to do Now

• Update your Supplemental Registration form. There are new questions on there having to do with the virtual fair, and we need your answers. The link is also found on your Entry Status screen. THIS MUST BE DONE BY SATURDAY MARCH 28.
• Prepare AND UPLOAD your presentation. The deadline for these uploads is April 6. That will give us a weekend to review your file and request any revisions. If revisions are requested, you will need to do so immediately. THE FINAL PRESENTATIONS MUST BE IN PLACE AND APPROVED BY APRIL 10. That means that after April 6 and before April 10, only those in a rejected status will be allowed to upload.
• Finally: remember that your abstract is going to be the first thing the judges see about your project. The abstract should summarize your main results. Ending your abstract with "Data is [sic] currently being collected and analyzed." is not a good idea in this context. You can upload a final abstract until Apr 9. Many of you should do so.

• No display of your age, grade, or school.
• No mention of previous awards, patents, etc.
• No mention of the name or institution of your mentor.
• A clear separation between the background material (including especially portions of the project done by your mentor or by others in the group, or your work in a prior year) and the work you are currently reporting.
  • The one departure from normal display rules is in the case where you want to compare data obtained previously or by others with your own, current data. On the actual poster, we have required that the comarative data be presented in the background section, isolated from your data. Since that doesn't quite work in a presentation, we have revised this rule to say that the two datasets may appear on the same slide, so long as they are plotted in separate graphs on the slide, and clearly labeled as to source.
• If you report results obtained by your mentor, just say "my mentor" -- do NOT use his/her name.
• If there are photos, graphs, or data displayed, you should state explicitly in text (not in footnotes) whether those items were obtained by you, by your mentor (or research group), or from other published work.
  • Clarification: This does not mean you should put in full citations on the slides (in unreadably small font). Just put something like "J. Smith, 2016" or "Univ of Okla website, news item," and put the full citation at the end in a list. That is short enough to use a normal font, but not so tiny as a footnote (which we explicitly do not want).
• No depiction of vertebrate animals under non-normal conditions.
• If you are required to display a Form 1C, then your title slide should contain one of the following statements:
  • If you worked at an outside lab, then the notation should be "this work was performed at a [university/industrial/private] lab." (choose the correct word).
  • If you worked at home or at school with a mentor who was not your teacher (note this includes your parent), then the notation should be "this work was performed with an outside mentor."