Online Academic Competition

"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson.

That's what we expected when we announced the ability for Slam-In to be used online - in exactly the same way it's used in the classroom, as a verbal event using all the same equipment.  We figured we'd be inundated with calls about how to get started.  Well, it's been quite the opposite.  On this topic we're as lonely as Maytag repairmen...

For the record, we never thought that online competition would replace face-to-face competition, but we felt that many of our customers would appreciate being able to scrimmage against other teams without having to spend the money & time to travel.  And using the Internet, we could bridge great distances between some schools who would never come face-to-face unless it was in a statewide competition.  We'd also heard that many schools were experiencing budget cuts, and coaches were being asked to reduce their travel expenses.

So why is it that our clients aren't (yet) using our online capabilities?  Is it something we said?  Or didn't provide?  Or didn't explain?  Please help us understand your needs regarding online academic competition.

Version 2.0 is just around the corner

For more than a year, we've had customized versions of Slam-In available for academic competition formats in  Florida (Commissioner's Academic Challenge), Kentucky (Kentucky Association for Academic Competition), Illinois (Scholastic Bowl for Elementary & Middle Schools as well as for High Schools), and Oklahoma (Oklahoma Association for Academic Competition).  However, we've wanted to provide the same level of customized support for other states' formats as well as several national formats, such as NAQT.

Version 2.0 will support multi-part bonuses played 1 part @ a time, allow the award of a bonus for early ring-in (or the assessment of a penalty for the same behavior), help teams raise money by displaying banner ads at the top of its screen, and even track question topics so that results reports show - by topic & sub-topic - where your students are performing well & where they need to improve.  In short, this new version will be able to support virtually any style of academic competition.

And it will - of course - continue to be operable over the Internet using something like GoToMeeting, YuuGuu, Vyew, or NetViewer, just to name a few screen-sharing programs.

The Slam-In blog is now active!

This blog is for the discussion of items of interest to those who (might) use Slam-In for academic competition.