A new school year is starting and it’s time to begin or renew your school’s membership in the Oklahoma Science Olympiad! You can register your team(s) at www.scilympiad.com/ok beginning August 16th. Returning Coaches and volunteers can re-establish their membership by logging in using their credentials from last year and update their information.
OKSciOly membership fees remain unchanged from last year. A school’s first registered team can join OKSciOly for $100 ($60 for nationals + $40 for state). The state fee will be waived for each additional team a school may have. Only the $60 national fee will be charged. Schools from outside Oklahoma may participate in OKSciOly Invitational Tournaments after paying the state fee and upon providing evidence of membership in their home state. The one-time fee allows out-of-state teams to participate in BOTH of this year’s planned Invitationals.
New 2022 Rules!: The 2022 Rules will be posted by the National SO office at 9am CT on Tuesday, September 7, 2021 (note the location change to the main SOINC.org website; not the Science Olympiad Store). Downloaders will agree to terms of use and fill out a short form, and then will be emailed a PDF copy of the Rules Manual.
As COVID-19 and its assorted variants persist, we’ll be prepared with pandemic-related accommodations. While we still have hopes of providing in-person Science Olympiad Tournaments later in the school year, that is not likely to be the case early on.
There are two other alternative scenarios for tournament formats we are likely to use this year. The first is the MiniSO, which we utilized during the 2021 season. The scilympiad.com platform allows us to deliver tests remotely to students who can collaborate on the exams in real time, even though they are in separate locations (next room, next door, or next continent). Build events in this format are video-recorded and submitted to Event Supervisors in the days prior to the tournament. Because of the possibility that some schools may not have the materials or equipment to test their devices, the “Build” events during a MiniSO format tournament are judged as field tests and the scores are not used to determine team scores.
The second alternative scenario is the SatelliteSO format, whereby students enrolled in tested events compete remotely as in MiniSO, but the “Build” events are contested in-person in the presence of Event Supervisors in a manner that minimizes interaction with folks from outside their school “bubble” and removes interaction with students from other schools. In this format, teams will select a 30-minute testing window and come to a central location (a host gym, for example) to have all of their devices tested during the window. Once their devices are tested, they would leave the host facility and the site would be sanitized before the start of the next test window and arrival of another team. This format will require some shifts in how the overall tournament is conducted, but we can save that discussion for later.
The format for each tournament be selected based upon the pandemic conditions are the time of the tournament. Last year showed us the resilience and commitment our students have for each other and to their own learning. Our aim is to provide them with the best Science Olympiad experience possible while keeping them as safe as we can while the Coronavirus evolves. Join us in that endeavor!