Sleddies

=What Happened to The Sleddies Awards?= = = = =

Early in the planning for SLEDcc, we announced an upcoming competition that would allow members of the SLED community to enter a build, project, or event into a competition to win a "Sleddie" Award in each of the six strands of the conference. The intent was to keep the educational build/project in its native location and allow evaluators to visit, score the build, and then tally all the results to assign a winner for each category which would be announced in a grand "Academy Awards" like ceremony both in Tampa and in-world.

We convened six committees of experienced educators in Second Life who worked hard to design the rubrics and criteria for each strand, we developed the in world "Evaluation Station" kiosks that would be used for the voting, and we got the word out to the SLED community to start preparing their builds. But alas, the person doing the programming for both the submissions and voting forms became unable to complete the work and we didn't find a suitable replacement in the few months leading up to the conference to run the competition as we envisioned.

=I Created a Build for This! Now What?!=

We certainly don't want the hard work of the strand committees, kiosk creators, and SLED members who developed submissions for The Sleddies to go to waste. We don't have the nice, smooth process for submissions and voting that we'd hoped for initially, however we //do// have a rough approximation of how the process was supposed to work. This year we will do a "dry run" of The Sleddies and take suggestions, feedback, criticism, and ideas for how the process can be improved so that NEXT year The Sleddies can be a truly well run competition that recognizes the very best builds and projects that the educational community has to offer. We offer our sincere apologies to anyone who has been disappointed by this process and the lack of communication as we attempted to figure out a good alternative.

=Entering a Submission for the Dry Run Sleddies=

If you already have a build created or an entry to The Sleddies that you were prepared to submit, you are welcome to help us prepare for next year by entering your submission. Please note that there will be no prizes or active competition this year, but we will provide you with feedback from evaluators and all entries will be recognized as valuable contributions to this process.

1) Chose one of the six strand categories to enter your submission.
Entries may be submitted to only **one** of the following six strands - please choose the category most appropriate! You may want to review the criteria for each strand before selecting the category for your entry.

**Red Strand:** [|Gaming and Simulations Criteria]

**Orange Strand**: [|Mixed Reality Learning Criteria]

**Yellow Strand**: [|Theory, Research, and Practice Criteria]

**Green Strand:** [|International, Diverse, and Special Populations Criteria]

**Blue Strand:** [|Projects and Events Criteria]

**Purple Strand**: [|Tools and Products Criteria]

2) Complete the Sleddies Submission Form
Enter the requested information in the Sleddies Submission Form. Your build will be added to the Sleddies Evaluation Page so that your entry can be scored by evaluators.

3) Place the Evaluation Station kiosk near your build in-world
You will be given a kiosk in-world following your registration, please place it in a prominent location near your entry and DE-LINK all of the prims (right click - edit the kiosk - ctrl+shift+L to de-link all the pieces). Anyone is invited to then go and evaluate your build using the kiosks to get information about the criteria for that strand and access the voting form.

=Evaluating the Dry Run Sleddies Submissions=

The dry run evaluation period will run from the time the build is submitted until a week after SLEDcc, ending on September 13, 2008. The following week, all submissions will be recognized on the SLED listserv and blog, and the cumulative results of the evaluations will be provided to the creators. If anyone has feedback about the criteria or process, or how The Sleddies can be improved for next year, please send your feedback to sledcc08@googlegroups.com.

To evaluate the Dry Run Sleddies Submissions, visit the Sleddies Evaluation Page, teleport to the various build locations, and use the kiosks to enter your evaluation.