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Tips on Writing the Final Summary Blog and Winning the Big Prizes

rscasny

Hi all participants.

The Experimenting with Waterproof Connectors is winding down with the final extra credit blogs due today.

On June 6th, I'll review the Forum participation and add points earned for each participant.

That leaves the big one task left to do: The Final Summary Blog.

The final summary blog is worth 300 points. I'll hand them over to the judges who will score them. Since I have two judges, I will average their individual scores into a final score and add them to the points earned for the rest of the blogs.

I wanted to offer some tips on writing the final summary blog.

1. The final blog should summarize all the work and experimenting you ghave done with waterproof connectors. Hence, a focus on the waterproof connectors should be prominent in the final blog.

2. The intro blog and the 5 extra credit blogs were added to the program for a specific reason: They can help you write the final blog (while adding points). Rather than simply linking these supplement blogs in the final blog, use the information they have to write a self-contained final blog. Now, if you want to add links to your intro/extracredit blogs in your discussion, that's fine. But our intention is to give the judges your final blog to grade your efforts.

3. The final blog should demonstrate the technical merit and your creativity around employing waterproof connectors in an electronics design. So, providing images, screenshots, and other media to lend to your tech finesse and creativity should be utilized.

4. Beyond the waterproof connectors, we provided the latte panda SBC in the kit. Show the reader how you used it, how you prepared it, and how you connected it to the waterproof connectors.

5. Articulate what your experiments were and how they turned out.

6. Draw some conclusions about participating in this program. They can range from what you may have learned about waterproofing an electronics design to what the successes and challenges were.

7. Make sure your final blog flows with some logical structure. The judges are going to read it for the first time. They want so see not only what you did but how your experiments evolved. Of course, this depends on what you did.

Like I said, the final summary blog is worth 300 points. We want the final blog to be an authoritative document. The more comprehensive it is, the closer it will get to the 300 points.

Good luck.

  • in reply to misaz

    Are you asking about maximum word count?

  • in reply to rscasny

    Maximum is inifinite because system do not limit it. I ask rather about recommended instead of maximum.

  • in reply to misaz

    I have the same dilemma - if I wanted to put all/most of  the information from blog posts into final post (to make it very detailed, standalone work) it will be long and heavy, possibly difficult to read (with all the screenshots and photos) - but from the above guidance I suspect that if I post only most important points from already published work (with references to the more detailed texts), supplemented with experiment results and conclusions  it could be unfavorably scored...

  • in reply to JWx
    rscasny said:
    The more comprehensive it is, the closer it will get
    JWx said:
    it will be long and heavy, possibly difficult to read

    Being comprehensive and 'long and heavy' are often one and the same.

    I've never known anyone entering competitions on the Community be penalised for providing too much valuable information about what they've done, it's very easy to instead penalise for not providing enough.

  • in reply to misaz

    Needless to say, infinity is not what we are looking for. But we are looking for a comprehensive discussion of what you did. Comprehensive discussion is hard to put a discrete number to. If I were doing it, I would look at my introductory blog and the extra credit blogs and then add in any tests or experiments not included in those. Then I would create a first draft that covers:

    Introduction -- what I proposed to do

    Kit Brief -- what materials and/or tools I worked with so the reader better understands your set up

    Discussion -- which covers your process, tests performs, and details of everything what you did

    Success and Challenges -- discuss anything that you encountered that you had to work through

    Conclusions -- an overall summary of what you concluded from your experiments and what you learned

    References/Miscellaneous--anything else that is relevant

    As you can see, a comprehensive report can get involved. Of course the actual word count would vary depending on your use of video, as one example. Visual presentation of what you did is important as well.

  • in reply to JWx

    JwX--In the past, some participants sometimes wrote separate blogs and linked all of these blogs (in some cases it was 12 or 15 blogs) to the final blog, which acted like a table of contents. My suggestion is to include those blogs in a references section. But the main discussion should be in the final blog. Well, you are concerned with it being long and heavy. But short and light isn't probably a winning strategy either. If you have a lot of screenshots and photos then you need to probably make some compromise of what to include or exclude. With regard to your "unfavorably scored" comment. The judges are getting your final blog. Just so long as it has a logical flow, makes sense and demonstrates technical merit and creativity, I don't see you being penalized. 

  • in reply to rscasny

    thank you (and cstanton) for clarification - I will go with aggregating most of the information into final blog route (maybe without most of the console output - it takes more space that is providing information)

  • in reply to cstanton

     Well Stated: "I've never known anyone entering competitions on the Community be penalised for providing too much valuable information about what they've done"