Chairman's Award submission formatting issues

[dsmoker]

Has anyone else had problems with the formatting of their Chairman's Award essay in its final form? Last year the team wrote the essay as an IM conversation, which was very well received, and this year the students chose another unique format that, like last year, was different but just used the simple tools of the space and return bars to accomplish. However, although the essay looked fine while the students were drafting and frequently saving it over the weeks, once the pictures were uploaded and the rest of the information in and it was to the point where it could be submitted, the essay changed and now reads as one long paragraph, with no returns or breaks whatsoever. When the students go back to edit, however, it reads as the team originally intended. Curious to see if anyone else is experiencing this problem. Not sure what we are going to do, as the essay as it now appears is not what the students wanted. They are so disappointed, and my heart breaks for them. They've really worked hard over the past 6 weeks to produce something that was different but effectively communicated our team's strengths. Whatever happens, I'm proud of what they've accomplished, that's for sure.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by dsmoker

Has anyone else had problems with the formatting of their Chairman's Award essay in its final form? Last year the team wrote the essay as an IM conversation, which was very well received, and this year the students chose another unique format that, like last year, was different but just used the simple tools of the space and return bars to accomplish. However, although the essay looked fine while the students were drafting and frequently saving it over the weeks, once the pictures were uploaded and the rest of the information in and it was to the point where it could be submitted, the essay changed and now reads as one long paragraph, with no returns or breaks whatsoever. When the students go back to edit, however, it reads as the team originally intended. Curious to see if anyone else is experiencing this problem. Not sure what we are going to do, as the essay as it now appears is not what the students wanted. They are so disappointed, and my heart breaks for them. They've really worked hard over the past 6 weeks to produce something that was different but effectively communicated our team's strengths. Whatever happens, I'm proud of what they've accomplished, that's for sure.

We feel your pain also as we end up rewriting while in the boxes of the submission entry, especially quotations and apostrophes.
Best advise is that you start earlier next time and spend the time to do it, much like a team would with their robot.
We never submit on the last day as anything can happen.

There are no exceptions to the deadline.

[dsmoker]

I think you misunderstood me. We started drafting weeks ago, in the essay box for the award submission. Our format was fine. Every time the students went back in to revise or add, the format was the same. It was only today, when we added the photos and went to finalize our submission and press that magic button, that the format mysteriously changed. We used a similar format last year with no problems, so the issue is a new one, and not one we could or should have anticipated or prevented. Nonetheless, I wasn't suggesting that we receive any extra time. Whatever happens, our submission will be completed by 11:59 p.m. tomorrow. I just wanted to see if others were having the same problem we were.

[rees2001]

Similar problems here. Goodbye formatting. No quotations, no apostrophes, no returns. Just one loooonnnnngggg paragraph.

[Ternz]

Same problem here - the issue is also with the Woodie Flowers submission. Although I've mentioned this in a different location...would writing "NEW PARAGRAPH" in front of the new paragraphs be okay (if characters permit)?

[rsisk]

Argh, it would be nice if there was some formatting, makes it a lot easier to read. Maybe some year we will be able to submit a PDF with it nicely formatted.

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by rsisk

Argh, it would be nice if there was some formatting, makes it a lot easier to read. Maybe some year we will be able to submit a PDF with it nicely formatted.

While a decent idea I doubt FIRST will return to the pdf version - which is the way we did it in 2003. There were all kinds of filesize issues and some team confusion about creating pdf, etc. The online webform, originally, was the "fix" for those headaches, and - at least when we had firstawards.org - was a lot friendlier for the judges to use.

[Kims Robot]

FAIR WARNING TO ALL TEAMS SUBMITTING TONIGHT!!!!

The Character Count you get from MS Word WILL NOT MATCH!!! Ours was something like 40-60 CHARACTERS off... thats A LOT. So get your essays into the system and hit SAVE BEFORE 8PM EST so you know what you are really working with.

And Please Please Please Please try and submit as early as you can, don't try and hit submit at 11:50pm! You may not make it in!


On a completely separate idea, I wonder what they would do if at the end of the document a team put in a url to a "pretty" version... (that is if you can afford enough characters!)

[dsmoker]

Not a bad idea about the URL, Kim. What we have done for now is to explain in the short essay box asking if there's anything else the judge's should know what our original intent was, and state that we would be bringing hard copies to the regional to help the judges better understand our submission (we've always put one in our Chairman's book anyway). And yes, our Woodie Flowers submission, which was just simple paragraphs, also did not recognize the hard returns between paragraphs. This is the first year as long as I have been working with the kids (4 years) that we have had this problem. You can fix the apostrophes and quotes, however, just by retyping them in the text box. For some reason it doesn't recognize them from Word.

Oh, well. Thanks, everyone, for letting us know that we're not alone.

[Amanda Morrison]

I wrote to FIRST about the lack of formatting in the awards submissions, and here's the response I received:

"How are you entering your Chairman’s Award Submission? Are you copying and pasting it into the box? If so, the system will omit the formatting that you did in your original document. However, you should be able to reinstate it by going through the one long paragraph and putting in the spaces, tabs, breaks, etc. yourself. You can also create paragraphs by typing your essay directly into the box for submission."

Hope that solves the mystery!

[Ternz]

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

I wrote to FIRST about the lack of formatting in the awards submissions, and here's the response I received:

"How are you entering your Chairman’s Award Submission? Are you copying and pasting it into the box? If so, the system will omit the formatting that you did in your original document. However, you should be able to reinstate it by going through the one long paragraph and putting in the spaces, tabs, breaks, etc. yourself. You can also create paragraphs by typing your essay directly into the box for submission."

Hope that solves the mystery!

Unfortunately, that does not fix the issue, at least for Woodie Flowers (I have not tried with Chairman's, but the submission format is exactly the same, so I would imagine there is no difference.)

As stated previously above, when you save the essay, which included tabs and enters, that was copied-and-pasted into the text box, the form shows a clump - one long paragraph without any tabs and enters. For Woodie Flowers: when you go back to "Edit Details" to hopefully reinstall those spaces and enters, the essay is back how it was originally - with spaces and tabs. Thus, the solution which FIRST proposed, at elast for Woodie Flowers, does not work.

[rsisk]

Have others found this to be the case????

I went back into the text box and added spaces and paragraph breaks and when I save it, they were all gone.