How to Participate

Quick Overview

The following steps give an overview of how to participate.

1. 1. A teacher/librian registers as contact person once for ever. (Contact details can be changed online later). If the contest is free (all grade 3/4 contests and the first contest in the school year in October for all other grade levels) then proceed with point 4.
2. 2. The contact person logs in and either purchases password credits herself/himself or enables parents to pay (please read all of the contact home page after loging in).
3. 3. Parents pay online (click 'Purchase Password Credits' on home page), teachers get the credits automatically on their account and get sent an email with the list of benefiting students. (Parents do not get passwords.)
4. 4. For each contest (whether free or with a fee) the contact person has to log into their contact page and request passwords.
5. 5. On the contest day teachers hand out passwords to their students, students write the contest online.
6. 6. On the evening of each contest day students see their results and can print ceritifcates, contact persons can inspect the results of their students and print certificates too.

Details

The contests can be attempted by any student in grades 3-12 in North America. The only restrictions are that the contests must be administered at a school by school staff, or at a library by a librarian or if both are not possible then at a church or community center or a governnment office by staff at these places. This is to ensure a fair competition. The contests are taken between 7:30am and 3:30pm for each respective timezone.

Contests for grade 3/4 are all free as well as the first contest in October for all grades. For grades 5-12 the fee per student is $10.00 CAD for the whole school year.

If you are a student, and you want to enter a competition then you need to find out whether your school is already registered. You can click here for a list of schools that have registered for the next contest. If your school is not in the list, then ask your teacher to register as a contact person for your school and then to register your school for the next contest(s). If you are home-schooled then you may take part by contacting your local library, and ask library staff to register as the contact person for the contest. You then can participate at the library on the day of the contest. If neither your school nor your library offers to register then please ask another school that is participating (see registered schools) or ask staff at the local church or community center.

If you are a teacher, and you wish to run contests for your students, then:

• Register as a contact person.
• Login as a contact person, and register for upcoming contests.

When registering for a free contest (all contests for grade 3/4 and the October contests for all other grades) then you can request as many passwords as you like. Before registering for a non-free contest password credits need to be purchased. One credit costs $10 and gives access for one student for all remaining 5 contests in that year. Credits can be purchased either by contact persons themselves (by sending cheques or by paying online from a PayPal account or a credit card), or contact persons can after logging in also enable others to pay (parents, fund raisers, the school board,..) and be fully decoupled from the financial side.

To summarize: For each contest (i.e. each day and each grade level whether free or paid) the contact person has to register the school and will obtain new passwords which are handed out to students just before the contest. Each password can be used only once by one student for the contest that the password was obtained for. Also, a student can try each contest only once. The only difference between free and paid contests is: For free contests contact persons can order as many passwords as they like. For paid contests the number of passwords is automatically determined by the number of purchased credits. Each purchased password credit allows the contact person to obtain one password for all contests of that age group in the whole school year.