2024 Competition Rules

2023-2024 Competition Details (see this post for details on changes from 2022-23)

Elements below:

I. Eligibility

II. Entries

III. Awards

IV. State Registration, Mentoring, and Judging

V. Design/Judging Criteria

VI. Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

VII. State Leadership Teams

VIII. Calendar


I. Eligibility

  1. Entrants must be pre-collegiate students, registered in grades 4-12 at the time of project submission, from public schools or non-public schools including online schools or home schools, who have not yet received a high school diploma or equivalent.
  2. Entrants must reside and be in school in the United States, including districts or territories, or attending a Department of Defense Education Activity school: 50 states, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, US Virgin Islands, and DODEA sites. (Thus, "state" in this document means one of these 57 units.) The state must be officially a "participating state" (i.e., a state leadership team has officially registered; see Part VII).
  3. Students can work singly or in a team of two, but can participate in only one entry. Teams with one student in middle school (gr.4-8) and one in high school (gr.9-12) must be considered as high school. Entry level is determined by student's grade (MS= gr.4-8, HS= gr.9-12), not by school name (e.g Lincoln Junior High School students in gr.7-8 participate in the MS competition while the gr.9 participants are in the HS competition). A team of two students from different schools can submit an entry to one school only.
  4. Entrants may work on the challenge through a school, a club, an "educational pod," or independently, but entries must be submitted to the state from their primary school of record (a recognized school or home school), regardless of engaging in activities at more than one location.
  5. The student's school determines the state of eligibility. A student living in State A but physically attending a school in State B can participate if and only if State B is participating, regardless of whether State A is participating. A student attending a fully online school can participate if the student's state of residence is participating.
  6. Any school or home school program can submit to the state a maximum of five (5) entries total, counting the sum of middle school and high school entries.

II. Entries

  1. Entry forms (student/s to school, school to state, state to Esri) will be made available to state leads in January 2024.
  2. Student entries must be from an ArcGIS School Bundle license's ArcGIS Online Organization (not a "public account", Developer license, Personal Use license, StoryMaps.com license, higher ed license, or other license). Any K12 school (public, non-public, or homeschool) or formal youth club can request for free an ArcGIS School Bundle (includes an ArcGIS Online Organization).
  3. Entries must be an ArcGIS StoryMap (must use a current template [standard or "Briefing"], not one of the "classic" templates), using an address of "storymaps.arcgis.com" (not "storymaps.com"), and be a single ArcGIS StoryMap (not a Collection, nor a story that launches other stories as integral parts of the project).
  4. Entries must focus on content within the state borders. States may choose to refine the focus further, but the geographic scope of the project must be within the state. The project may reference data outside the state "for context," but may not extend the focus of the study beyond the state borders. For example, broader patterns of environmental characteristics or demographic movements may be referenced for context, but the focus must be on phenomena within the state.
  5. Schools must announce their own internal deadlines, in time to complete judging and provide information to the state by its deadline. States must announce their in-state deadlines, but can be no later than 5pm Pacific Time on Wed May 8, 2024. States must submit data to Esri no later than 5pm Pacific Time on Mon May 13, 2024.

III. Awards

  1. Participating states may choose as awardees up to 5 HS projects and up to 5 MS projects. Awardees will each receive a prize of $100 (followig release of the national results). From their awardees, states may identify 1 HS and 1 MS "state winners"  (1HS+1MS) to be entered in a final level of competition, a national level to be judged by Esri.
  2. Optional video: Each state's chosen 1HS+1MS state winners are also invited to create and submit a video of up to 3 minutes (max of 180 seconds) for Esri to post along with the StoryMap. The videos should be in .mp4 format and 1080x720 (or higher) resolution. The videos will not be part of the national judging process but will be a way for these 1HS+1MS state winners to share more of their story to interested audiences across the state/country/globe. The deadline for Esri to receive the videos (and required permission form) is Thu May 23, 2024, 5pm Pacific Time. (See Part VI #3 for more.)
  3. Esri will announce its national awards decision by 5pm Pacific Time on Tue May 28, 2024, and release results with links to all awardee creations, and special attention to the 1HS+1MS awardees, at both state and national levels.
  4. Esri will hold a webinar on Thu June 20, 2024, 5-6pm Pacific Time, celebrating the Competition. The webinar will be held live, and will be recorded. The "national winners" at HS and MS level will be invited to participate in the webinar to talk and present live their StoryMap.
  5. Because it is impossible to foresee all circumstances, awards are subject to postponement, change, or elimination at the discretion of Esri and NCGE.
  6. This listing of awards should not be interpreted as constraining how individual teachers, schools, or states can celebrate their scholars who create entries. Indeed, there are so many positive benefits that can come from participation that we encourage such celebrations, especially for those who do not earn a state award.

IV. State Registration, Mentoring, and Judging

  1. States may determine but must announce in advance if they will require any form of "pre-registration" by schools as potential participants, and any cutoff date. Any such exclusive operation must be clearly announced and applied equitably.
  2. States are encouraged to establish an "Early Mentoring" option. In this scenario, states set an "Early Mentoring" deadline, recommended as no later than Fri March 15, 2024. Entries submitted to the state leadership group by the state deadline would go to state mentors for review and comment (but not scoring), so students might benefit from learned guidance. States would be responsible for constructing and implementing their own submission/ comment/ return process, ensuring adequate opportunity for mentors to review and respond, and students to consider and revise. Any such process should require "transparency," to foster good instruction and prevent inappropriate communication; only a student's parent/ guardian/ teacher/ leader should be communicating with the student; all other communication should be between adults. In considering this model, states are encouraged to seek early commitments from many mentors.
  3. States using an "Early Mentoring" process may determine but must announce clearly in advance if entries must have gone through the formal "Early Mentoring" process to be accepted for final state judging, and must apply the policy equitably.
  4. States must announce in advance their deadlines for entries to be submitted from the schools. States may choose their criteria for determining awardees, but are recommended to follow the criteria Esri will use for the national level.
  5. States must submit their results to Esri no later than 5pm Pacific Time on Mon May 13, 2024

V. Design/Judging Criteria

  1. Account: Entries must be from the ArcGIS Online Organization of an ArcGIS School Bundle license. This license can be operated by, e.g., the student's school or club, the district, the state GIS Education Team, or similar group. The entry must be able to remain visible publicly without login through at least June 2025 (one year past the close of this event), ideally longer.
  2. Login/Sharing: Entries must be shared with the public, visible without requiring a login. Entries engaging "premium data" (login required, such as premium content from Living Atlas) must set the display to permit access without needing a login. See helpful note.
  3. Originality: Entries must be "current original work by the students," conceived, created, and completed during the 2023-24 academic year by the student(s) submitting the entry. Class projects turned into an entry by one student, and teacher-directed projects, are not acceptable. Use of "generative artificial intelligence" is not permitted; basic spell-check and grammar-check tools are permitted. Projects may use data generated by outside persons or institutions, within guidelines of "fair use." Students are encouraged to use appropriate professionally generated GIS data, but these must be documented as to source, and the integration, treatment, and presentation must be original. Entries must represent the students' work from the current academic year, 2023-24. Incorporating data (layers or maps) from a previous year's entry is permitted for historical reference, but the focus must be on current work that is substantively beyond the previous content, and the documentation must clarify what previously created content is being re-used; for instance, a student working on a project in Year1 might re-use some data in a somewhat similar project in Year3 but must expand substantively on the data, change the project focus, improve the analysis, and document what has been re-used.
  4. Visual Supports: Because this is meant to be a "map-centric" exploration, analysis, and presentation of a geographic phenomenon, permission to use of "non-map visuals" (images and videos) is very limited. Exceeding the limits means a "progressive reduction in judged score." The limits are:
    1. Total of no more than 60 seconds of video, which must be created by the project author (animated images count as a video; time-enabled map layers do not count as a video)
    2. Total of up to two images not created by the project author (e.g., 1 historic portrait photo plus 1 historic landscape photo)
    3. Total of up to five images created by the project author (replication of project maps as smaller/thumbnail images and items visible in popups within interactive maps do not count against these limits; icons used to help delineate organization within the entry do not count against these limits).
  5. URLs: Entries must provide to the school/ state/ Esri three pieces of URL data: the URL prefix for the Org hosting the entry, and two links in "short form" (e.g. https://arcg.is/1a2b3c). ALWAYS test links in a "private/incognito" browser window before submitting. The three items needed are:
    1. The "Org URL prefix," which is the set of characters between "https://" and ".maps.arcgis.com" distinguishing this Org from all other Orgs, for example, the "XYZ" in "https://XYZ.maps.arcgis.com."
    2. A short URL of the StoryMap link going to the publicly visible ArcGIS StoryMap, i.e. leading to "https;//storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/{32_character_code}". This can be generated by clicking the "Share" button at top right of the published ArcGIS StoryMap and choosing "Copy Link".
    3. A short URL of the item details "Overview" page (metadata page) for the publicly visible storymap.
      1. User should log in and ensure the storymap is shared publicly
      2. In the URL bar, erase all text preceding the storymap's 32-character code.
      3. In front of the 32-character code, paste the text shown here between the quote marks: "https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id="
      4. Click "Enter." The window should show the metadata page, with a "public URL" format.
      5. Partway down the page, below the "ID: [32-character-code]", click the "Share" button and a "ShortURL" window appears. Copy the short URL.
      6. (For more info on the item details page, see also https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/share-maps/link-to-items.htm)
  6. Scoring: The state can vary this, and even use different systems for HS and MS, but must apply the same system to all entries in a single grade band, and the system must be clarified for the entrants at the start. The national competition will use this system, and recommends it or something similar at the state and school levels: "We look for a clear focus/topic/question/story, good and appropriate data, effective analysis, good cartography, thoughtful presentation, and complete documentation. The element by element analysis in the 2020 national results, and the 2021, 2022, and 2023 national winner entries present good examples of what is sought in a project."
  7. Project Tips:
    1. Look at previous national winners and honorable mention projects, and the 2020 results. This is above all a "map competition." Entries should address an identified issue/ puzzle/ challenge, not just document what's where, but look at "why it's there, and so what." Entries should be analytical in nature, map-centric rather than photo-centric or relying on too much text. Use of videos or static images generated by anyone other than the team members must be carefully documented, and such media should be used very sparingly; links to external content generally detracts in national judging. The project must emphasize student work, though using professionally generated GIS data is encouraged and does not detract from national scores. A good way to judge project balance quickly is to identify the amount of time a viewer would spend consuming the entire project; map-based time and attention should be more than half.
    2. Good projects help even a viewer unfamiliar with the region know quickly the location of the project focus. Requiring a viewer to zoom out several times to determine the region of focus detracts from the viewing experience. (Pretend the viewer is from a different part of the country, or from a different country.)
    3. Maps should invite interactive exploration by the viewer, not be static ("images"). The presentation should hold the attention of the viewer from start to finish.
    4. Maps should demonstrate "the science of where" -- the importance of location, patterns, and relationships between layers. There is an art to map design; too much data may feel cluttered, but showing viewers too little data at a time may limit the viewers' easy grasp of relationships.
    5. Care should be taken to make "popups" useful, limited to just the relevant information. They should add important information, and be formatted to make the most critical information easily consumable. These popups can include formatted text, key links, images, data presented in charts, and so forth. Long lists of unformatted attributes generally detract, especially if they include data with meaning and relevance not immediately clear.
    6. Document the project thoroughly. National winners, and the 2020 awardees highlighted for documentation, show good documentation: organized and thorough.
    7. See the "Project Design" section in the Resources page

VI. Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

  1. Schools should consider issues around exposing PII. See https://esriurl.com/agoorgsforschools for strategies to minimize use of PII in ArcGIS Online. Teachers and club leaders should help students minimize exposure of their own PII and that of others, including in map, image, and text.
  2. States must help potential entrants understand the level of PII required. Entries submitted to Esri for the top national prize (i.e. each state's 1HS+1MS) must agree in advance to expose student names along with the school names, and school city/state (homeschool students would be identified to closest city/town name). States must secure and share with Esri a signed permission form from the families of 1HS+1MS awardees to have the names made publicly visible.
  3. State 1HS+1MS awardees are invited to share with Esri a video of up to 3 minutes length. This is entirely optional, and submissions will be visible to the public along with the awardees' StoryMap. Parents should guide what PII (name, face, location, personal details) is shared by the student within the video. A video will not be accepted by Esri without the accompanying permission form available from the state. (See Part III #2 for more.)
  4. Esri does not seek, collect, or accept student names for any entrants other than the national prize entrants (each state's 1HS+1MS). These and only these 1+1 will have names exposed by Esri.

VII. State Leadership Teams

  1. The state leadership team is the key to student participation in a state. All students in grades 4-12 are eligible to participate if a state has submitted an application to and been recognized by Esri and NCGE. If there is not an approved state leadership team, no students from the state may submit entries.
  2. State leaders should apply using a form downloadable here. (There should be only one entry per state. Communicate with your in-state colleagues; collaboration is key.)
  3. State application deadline is Fri Dec.01, 2023. States submitting a complete application by Fri Nov.10, 2023 (the Friday before GIS Day), will get an "earlybird" email promotion from Esri to our connections in the state advertising the state's participation.
  4. The two state team leaders must be adults (over 18 years old) who are willing to help develop the state rules and apply things fairly for all students in the state. State team helpers can be teachers, education leaders, college instructors, GIS practitioners, persons at nonprofit or for-profit groups, or any adults interested in students across the state being able to participate. Successful states have leadership teams that reach out through multiple channels to promote and support participation. (See this blog for a good example.)
  5. The tasks that must be handled by the leadership team are these:
    1. Submit complete application paperwork to Esri, including the address of the state website and active email to which state participants may submit questions. The paperwork defines whom Esri will deal with on rules, participation, and awards.
    2. Decide quickly any state customizations: particular themes, dates, and participation policies.
    3. Post the necessary information, including state customizations, to a publicly accessible website. This can be quite elaborate (see MN_2023 and AR_2023 examples) but does not have to be. Even just a single page of plain text works, as long as it is publicly visible and provides all the relevant info. (Good options are traditional websites, ArcGIS hubs, StoryMaps, etc.)
    4. Let schools, clubs, educators, students, and GIS users across the state know about the competition, website, and email with active marketing. (The big differentiator of successful states is good marketing. It is a process, not a single event; applying to lead and producing the web page are necessary but not sufficient for success. Help teachers and students alike understand what to do and how to do it. Point them to the resources that exist.
    5. Recruit and organize judges, and coordinate any "early mentoring option" communication.
    6. Post before February 2024 the state's official versions of Esri's template entry forms.
    7. Ensure the entries from school to state carry complete information, so judges can do their work.
    8. Submit to Esri complete information about participation and awardees from the state, including permission forms. Submit to Esri any follow-up videos from the 1HS+1MS awardees.
    9. Coordinate with Esri and NCGE on distributing prizes.
    10. To help with all these, Esri will participate in (and record) webinars, for leaders and educators alike.

VIII. Calendar

  • September 2023: State application period begins
  • Nov. 10, 2023: State application "earlybird deadline" (earns a state email by Esri)
  • Nov. 15, 2023: GIS Day (good day for letting teachers, students, parents know about the Competition)
  • Dec. 01, 2023: Last day for states to apply to participate
  • Jan. 25, 2024: Student/School/State entry forms are posted (Leaders: Check State Leaders Community Group)
  • Feb. 10, 2024: State versions of Student and School entry forms must be posted
  • Mar. 15, 2024: Failsafe target for states using an early mentoring process; be sure to check your state for exact date
  • Apr. 26, 2024: State results submission window opens
  • May 03, 2024: Failsafe target for students to submit entries to schools; be sure to check your state for exact date
  • May 08, 2024: Failsafe target for schools to submit results to state; be sure to check your state for exact date
  • May 13, 2024, 5pmPT: State results due to Esri
  • May 28, 2024: Competition results posted
  • June 20, 2024, 5pmPT: Webinar about Competition results

QUESTIONS?

See this post for details on changes from 2022-23.

Email Charlie Fitzpatrick, Esri K12 Education Manager, cfitzpatrick@esri.com.


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