PJAS+Information

=**Details about PJAS**=




 * Regional meeting:**
 * Date: Saturday March 3, 2012
 * Place: [|E.T.Richardson Middle School]
 * Time 8:30 am to 12:30 pm
 * Dress: Business professional


 * Format for the regional meeting:**
 * When you arrive, you will be brought to a meeting room and asked to register
 * You will be assigned a presentation classroom with other students in your category
 * There will be 2-3 judges and two time keepers/technicians in the classroom
 * Students will begin their presentations - the younger students usually present first. Students must remain in the classroom until ALL presentations are given and the judges dismiss you.
 * Once dismissed, you will be taken to the cafeteria where you will wait until all of the presentations are finished and the results are tallied.
 * Each group will be called up to the front of the cafeteria and student awards will be given
 * Each student will receive a first, second or third award (honorable mention awards are rarely given at the region meeting). First award winners are eligible to advance to the state meeting at Penn State in May.
 * If you win a first award, you will be given an application for the state meeting when you win your award.


 * About your presentation:**
 * You will prepare an oral presentation accompanied by transparencies that you have made
 * The transparencies will be made from a power point presentation that you will make
 * Your oral presentation can be NO LONGER than 10 minutes. Ideally, it should be at least 7 minutes in length.
 * You MAY NOT use props of any kind
 * You may use note cards as an aid, but the majority of your presentation should be memorized


 * Transparency slides that you should include in your presentation:**
 * A title page – you can put your name, but not your school
 * Question or problem
 * Background information – Use bullets to outline information necessary for the judges to understand your project and the rationale behind it. You may also use diagrams or pictures (make sure they are cited)
 * Hypothesis
 * Materials - If your presentation is long, you don't have to include this slide, but if your presentation is short, it should be included
 * Procedure - Use bullets or numbers and be brief. Don't include steps like "Gather materials"
 * Slides that display or outline any special apparatus, instrument, or procedure you may have used. You can also use slides with photographs.
 * A slide stating your independent variable, dependent variable, control, and constants.
 * Data – charts and graphs – you may need several transparencies for this section. Your discussion should be an oral explanation of your data.
 * Conclusion – Was your hypothesis supported? Sources of error or factors that could have affected your results, Further research.
 * References


 * Some tips about making your slides easy to read:**
 * Use the largest print that you can on the slides
 * Use bullets when possible. Don't write long narratives or full sentences - the judges do not have the time or ability to read them AND listen to your presentation at the same time.
 * Adjust the plot points, trendlines, and axis titles on your graphs so that they are **as large as possible**. Even though your slides may look easy to read on the power point, they are much harder to read when they are transferred to transparency. Also, remove the narrative texts from your graphs - the judges won't be able to see them, and you are going to be giving the narrative for the graph orally as you show the slide.


 * About the transparencies:**
 * You have to transfer your power point to transparencies. You can do this by purchasing transparencies at Staples, Office Max, or another office supply store OR you can have Kinkos or an office supply store make the transparencies for you. Either way, it is expensive. A box of 20 transparencies runs about $20.00 and having them done can cost up to $40.00
 * If you are printing your own transparencies: make sure that you purchase the correct transparencies for YOUR printer. If you buy the wrong ones, they will smear and you'll have a mess on your hands
 * Once you have made your power point:**
 * Post it on this wiki (if you are Mrs. G's student) or show it to your mentor AT LEAST two weeks before the competition. Your mentor will help you edit and revise it.
 * Do NOT print it until you have been given the OK. However, once you are approved you to print, DO NOT wait until the last day to print your slides onto transparencies - I have seen many a disaster occur at the last minute - broken printers, printers running out of ink, transparencies that smear, office supply stores that are closed due to snow....
 * Once you have finalized your power point and your oral presentation, you will need to PRACTICE!!!! You should practice in front of your mentor, your science teacher, Mrs. Lipschutz, or anyone who is willing to hear you. Please time your presentation to make sure that it is LESS THAN 10 minutes in length. The more you practice, the better your presentation will be. I have a LARGE number of presentations to hear, so don't wait until the last minute!

=Take a look at this sample presentation from 2010:=

=media type="youtube" key="M0AGsGRARt0?hl=en" height="344" width="425"=

There are also some sample power points on my webpage. They are several years old, so they still have the school's name on the title and they don't have a slide that has variables, controls, and constants, but still, they are pretty good. Click [|here] to link to them.