Volunteer Judges are Needed for Statewide Technology Competition

Judges also will receive a T-shirt, a Certificate, and a big Thank You from Florida TSA for your help.

SearchAmelia received an email looking for people to consider volunteering one day of time in February to assist Florida students to achieve success in a statewide talent competition at the Technology Student Association (TSA) statewide competition, scheduled for the Omni Amelia Island Conference Center, February 23-25, 2012.

TSA is looking for interested local educators, college students, and citizens to serve as judges for their event. The commitment for each judge would be to serve on a panel of three judges, assisted by a Florida TSA faculty coordinator in terms of the rules, questions, and related details.

The competition involves about 1,000 students from about 100 high schools and middle schools throughout Florida who have already won local competitions, and who now are competing at the state level for the opportunity to represent Florida at the TSA National competition in Nashville, TN in June 2012.

There are about 130 separate competitions, half for high school and half for middle school students. The TSA National web site provides the mission and other details about the organization and the annual competition at: www.tsaweb.org. For more information about the FLORIDA TSA organization, go to www.floridatsa.com.

To sign up as a volunteer to judge one or more of the competitions or to get more info about what is entailed, visit Florida TSA’s Judge Registration page. https://www.registermychapter.com/tsa/fl/JudgeReg.aspx or contact Florida TSA Judge Manager Mary Herring at MarysTSAjudges12@hotmail.com.

Please note that judges do not need to be subject matter “experts” in the topic, but judges should be able to assess the students’ presentations in general terms.

Most volunteer judges will be asked to be available for a preliminary judging (roughly 3-4 hours) to come up with a Top Ten for each event, and a second session (also 3-4 hours) to judge the Top Ten and rank them. Florida TSA is scheduling most preliminary and final sessions on the same day, and will provide meals for judges at the Omni conference center. Judges also will receive a T-shirt, a Certificate, and a big Thank You from Florida TSA for your help.

There will be three judges for each event. Each judge will be introduced via email to the Event Coordinator (the faculty person for each competition) and given the rules and grading sheet prior to the event.

This is a wonderful opportunity for those of us in the Nassau County area to encourage these wonderful students interested in the field of technology.