Amphibians and Reptiles

[crabnebula143]

crabnebula - EXCELLENT choice of events! I did all 4 of those last year and i'm doing all 4 of those again!

thanx, pleiades

how do you distinguish Trachemys (sliders) + Pseudemys (redbellies + cooters)

[Deeisenberg]

red mark by the ears, also general coloration

[Flavorflav]

I can write a decent test in like 2-3 hrs...

Not if it's your first one. It takes almost that long just to do the formatting. Once you have one, you can use it as a template. But you're right, this is actually one of the quicker events to write. It's probably more like eight hours for an all-picture event.

[robotman]

that sounds about right

[Deeisenberg]

I have to disagree, any estimate over 4 hours is only assuming a COMPLETE lack of knowledge of ANYTHING related to the event. After all, people, especially professors, are usually going to be good with PPT.

[Pleiades]

The time for tests will probably vary. In this event all you really need to do is find a picture, open a field guide, and ask suff about it. Now, that is bare minimum. I would hope that most people running the event would spend some time with that but it is clear that is what some supervisors do. Making a written test is probably a lot harder to write but formatting it should be A LOT easier because you can use software such as examview and just type your questions into it and it has a very nice format. I absolutely love test that were made with examview. I have a feeling that is what most teachers use to make tests. At my school i see it more with science teachers than anyone else. Coming up with questions for those test would probably be a lot harder because you dont have a field guide sitting there to base your questions off of.

[Flavorflav]

I have to disagree in return. The .ppt takes very little time to format, but the answer key and answer sheet take a great deal of time if you want the grading to go quickly. Choosing the pictures also takes quite a bit of time, if you are being careful to include a representative set of taxa and be sure that diagnostic characters are clearly visible. And writing questions is easy if you keep asking the same diet-habitat-range stuff, but if you want a more balanced and broader test you are going to have to spend quite a bit more time and thought.

[Deeisenberg]

I would hope that they would try to impede view of diagnostic features. If you want a GOOD picture, it should be a picture that when thoroughly examined is clear, however is still relatively difficult when making the initial identification.

It is true, formatting ppt takes very little time, and the questions should no matter what the format take the majority of the time. Still I think saying that it takes over 4 hours to make a 1 hour test is exaggerated, and I say this as someone who has made numerous tests that are of the quality or above that of last years test for nationals (actually that wasn't a great test, way too easy). I mean you have to think about your questions, and if you do so the competitiors will have to think. You can easily have a ID and 4 questions per slide, with the 4 questions being reasonably hard taken from internet sources, have 3 minutes per slide, and make 20 slides in 4 hours or less.

[dickyjones]

An official test for this event I think would take probably around 4-7 hours, depending on size and difficulty. It's a lot easier to make a test to practice with just getting pictures from the internet. Hopefully at competitions, they either make their own pictures or use actual specimens. Getting about 20 specimens organized would probably take a while. Also they have to make sure they can use these specimens to get a wide range of questions involving many of the topics from the rules. On the practice tests I make, I usually just write down questions from something I read in a field guide or had in my binder. In a real test, a supervisor would hopefully cross reference several resources in order to make a test that doesn't give a huge advantage to a single field guide. Also they have to check their wording on questions to make sure that it leads to single (or a very few) correct answers that can be quickly graded. It's much more difficult to get an official test made than a practice test (especially if the supervisor does pay close attention to the rule).

[Flavorflav]

If you can't see diagnostic features, how can you diagnose? I saw one event in which the image was of a melanistic rattlesnake with its chin tilted up so you could not see the scales on the top of the head. There was thus no way to tell whether it was Sistrurus or Crotalus, and it came down to a guess. That was an event writer who didn't take enough time.

A good event should be balanced, and balance requires either careful planning in advance, or making extra questions/stations and trimming. This often takes as long or longer than banging out the basic structure of the event does.