{"id":316,"date":"2020-07-19T07:56:36","date_gmt":"2020-07-19T07:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/2020\/07\/19\/alou-in-practice\/"},"modified":"2020-07-19T07:56:36","modified_gmt":"2020-07-19T07:56:36","slug":"alou-in-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mnfpsp.org\/index.php\/2020\/07\/19\/alou-in-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"ALoU in practice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>For anyone not familiar with the ALoU Generating Tool; A=Advantages, L=Limitations, o=ways to overcome obstacles,<\/em><br \/><em>and U=Unique opportunities. Here is ALoU in action as the Board and Administration applied it to taking a critical look<\/em><br \/><em>at how we might improve our competitions and be better prepared for future challenges.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>ADVANTAGES<\/strong><\/span> of submitting the written work prior to the onsite competition date:<\/p>\n<p>Shorter onsite State Competition day.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Students would get more rest in preparation for the competitions.<\/li>\n<li>Evaluators would be better rested and have more time to better serve the students by having the time to give high<br \/>quality feedback to help students to improve their skills.<\/li>\n<li>Saves money for teams who have had Hotel costs. The shorter day would most likely mean that teams can easily<br \/>do all of their travel on the same day.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Less set up time and costs:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>No need to set up gyms with tables and chairs the night before.<\/li>\n<li>No need for the extra volunteers needed to supervise the onsite competition. Each year it\u2019s harder to get enough<br \/>volunteers. We often have inconsistencies during the competition because volunteers have misunderstood the<br \/>instructions.<\/li>\n<li>No need for the extra volunteers to take the tables and chairs in the gym down.<\/li>\n<li>Less expense to the program for the Facilities Fees.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Fewer\u00a0Volunteers needed:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Because the evaluators will have the written scored prior to the onsite date, some of our Evaluators will be able to<br \/>Judge PAP. This will allow more coaches to see their students\u2019 performances.<\/li>\n<li>Each year there is a decrease in parent volunteers. Some coaches simply can\u2019t get volunteers. Some parents sign<br \/>up and cancel at the last minute. Some volunteers just never show up.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Having two weeks between writing and presenting, teams will have more time to plan and prepare the presentation of<br \/>their idea. Their presentation could be more complete with a beginning (why) a middle (what) and the end (how).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Props completed ahead of time &#8211; less mess at state<\/li>\n<li>More balanced team participation<\/li>\n<li>Time to practice and be more comfortable in their presentation to better sell their idea<\/li>\n<li>After presenting round 1, teams can have a more relaxed lunch, visit CmPS booths, experience Scenario<br \/>Writing, experience Scenario Writing, and will not feel rushed or tired due to less stress that day.<\/li>\n<li>This would be more like IC in regard to more time to prepare and to more fully participate in the FPS<br \/>experience.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>LIMITATIONS \/ Ideas how to Overcome the limitations<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>A part of another day, a Friday or Saturday might create another possible conflict for students in other activities.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This might be overcome by making sure that students\/families have the calendar in hand at the beginning of the<br \/>year.<\/li>\n<li>This change will be shared prior to the start of the school year to help people prepare.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Monitoring the Competitions to avoid cheating:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As it is, we have problems with consistency with our volunteer monitors. We send out detailed instructions and<br \/>provide training. We even have a lead for them to turn to if they are not sure. Yet, at the end of the day we\u2019ve<br \/>found everything from a monitor allowing the use of a phone simply because a student confidently tells them that<br \/>their coach said it was okay to a student actually being so disrespectful when asked to put their phone in the<br \/>designated spot that the volunteer gives up.<\/li>\n<li>WAYS to Overcome this obstacle: The Honor Code is about all that we have that anyone has when it comes to<br \/>online competitions. Keep in mind that people who have cheating in mind, will always find a way to cheat, even<br \/>onsite. (As stated above.) Notes have been smuggled in. They were DQ\u2019d. The interesting part is that for all of the<br \/>notes in hand, they would not have made the holistic round of evaluation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The time between the written competition and the PAP could throw teams off.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Teams will need to be ready to perform when they get to the Onsite competition.<\/li>\n<li>Teams will need to have their regularly scheduled coaching sessions.<\/li>\n<li>Props will need to be ready and their presentation will have to be done before arriving on-site<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ways to overcome the challenges noted by Lisa Sauer, our PAP Coordinator, would be that the regular weekly practice<br \/>that takes place in between the written work and the onsite work would be for the students to make their PAP presentation<br \/>the focus of their practice. They can be planning ahead and making their props. During the 20 minutes of final prep at the<br \/>onsite competition, they can actually practice their presentation with their props. This would help to keep their UP and<br \/>Action Plan fresh in their minds.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>UNIQUE opportunities<\/strong><\/span><br \/>In my (Cheryl Whitesitt) 34 years of being an evaluator, at every level, Regionals, State, and IC, the evaluators have not<br \/>had the time to catch mistakes or glitches. We\u2019ve had mistakes that were missed on paper. While some of the mistakes<br \/>flowed into the electronic evaluations, some were fixed. Although, the electronic version created new things to be<br \/>checked.<\/p>\n<p>One of the major Unique Opportunities would be the gift of TIME to catch these errors. After every evaluation, Adam,<br \/>our Evaluation Director, and I receive word of errors. Coaches have been VERY patient and understanding as we\u2019ve<br \/>worked through them. We\u2019d much rather get these fixed before the Awards have been announced.<\/p>\n<p>Improved consistency of evaluations.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone is on the same playing field because all of the work is typed.<br \/>The evaluators can read the work much more easily. We\u2019ve all had work that we simply scored a \u201cPerhaps\u201d simply<br \/>because we could not read it.<\/p>\n<p>We can give attention to CmPS, Scenario Writing, and Scenario Performance.<\/p>\n<p>PAP\u2019s may vastly improve.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The final product may have a clearer story line and teams may feel much better about this part of the competition.<\/li>\n<li>Teams will also have the opportunity to add more detail to their script as well as their props.<\/li>\n<li>Audience members watching will have a better idea of what the presentation is all about.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The areas teams score the most points are relationship to the action plan, persuasiveness, and creativity.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Working on the PAP ahead of time will increase points scored in these categories.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><em>For anyone not familiar with the ALoU Generating Tool; A=Advantages, L=Limitations, o=ways to overcome obstacles,<\/em><br \/><em>and U=Unique opportunities. Here is ALoU in action as the Board and Administration applied it to taking a critical look<\/em><br \/><em>at how we might improve our competitions and be better prepared for future challenges.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whtnw"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mnfpsp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mnfpsp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mnfpsp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mnfpsp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mnfpsp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mnfpsp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mnfpsp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mnfpsp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mnfpsp.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}