I went over the submission process for the Impact award and it’s a bit contradictory?
At the top it says: “The video may be shown to the judges during the team’s presentation if the team chooses. Even if the video is NOT shown during the interview, a video must still be provided to the Judges for the team to be eligible for the FIRST Impact Award. In addition, the team must provide the equipment for viewing (i.e. laptop/speakers etc.) the video if they intend to show it during their interview.”
But farther down it states: Note: Unless you show your video as part of your presentation, your video will not be judged as part of your submission, though an inappropriate video will disqualify you from winning.
So I took that to mean that the video component will NOT be judged as part of the presentation unless it is shown during it, it’s just an “addition” to the presentation? We showed our video as part of the presentation last year and the judges “frowned” upon that. They said during the feedback that they preferred the video to be just given on the flash drive and not included as part of the presentation. I just wanted to make sure I got all of the clarification possible. Thanks in advance!
My understanding is that the video may be used as a supplement, but is required as part of the submission overall. This is something that will be shown to an entire audience when your team wins, so understandably it needs to see some review beforehand by the judges.
That said, the time that you use in your presentations/Q&A is an opportunity for the judges to see and hear your students’ experiences firsthand, not in some pre-recorded fashion, so it makes sense that showing the video would come across as “burning time”.
Avoid using the video as part of your time - you only get 7 minutes to present, half of that is gone from an Impact Award video! - but focus more on conveying as much as you can in an engaging fashion.
So nothing is precluding you from showing the video, but think about this from the perspective of the judges. Would you rather see a polished, pre recorded video or engage live with the students right in front of you? A live presentation is often going to seem more impactful than a video. You can use the video, but you’re judged based on the content you put in front of the judges and a video may not be what makes your team stand out.
Absolutely. We don’t want to show the video at the time of the presentation but the wording was a bit confusing. We know if you’re selected, your video is shown during the awards ceremony. The students were a bit concerned that the video itself isn’t judged and doesn’t “count” except if you are selected. I think that is where the confusion came in! I definitely like the full 7 minutes to present rather than taking 3 of it up with the video!