Information about the slide show DVD

Science fair coordinators -- I just wanted to highlight a few important details about the slide show DVD that Our Science Fair produces for your science fair:

1.  We need at least 60 photos uploaded from parents in order to produce the slide show for you.  If we don't get at least 60 photos by the deadline, we won't produce the slide show.  Parents often need to be reminded to upload their photos, so feel free to use our new Send Email feature on your Participants page to send out a reminder to them.

2.  The deadline for uploading photos is 4 days before your science fair.  Only photos that are submitted before the deadline will be included in the slide show.  This is so that we can mail the DVD to you, and you can receive it before your science fair.  The idea is that you can have the slide show running during your science fair as a fun little activity for your visitors.

3.  Our Science Fair may email parents after your science fair is over, offering them a chance to purchase a copy of the slide show DVD.  As the science fair coordinator, you can set the price of the DVD, similar to the way you set the price of display boards and header boards.  Your school keeps the difference between the base cost and the price you set.  Only PayPal payments will be accepted for slide show DVD orders, so you won't have to deal with checks coming in.  You will need to distribute the DVDs to the students when they arrive.

4.  If you are uncomfortable with any aspect of this feature, you can disable it by preventing parents from uploading their photos.  You can do this from your Customize Photo Upload Page page.

That's it for now ... as always, let us know if you have any questions.  We hope your planning is going smoothly ... there are a lot of science fairs coming up in March and April, so it's a busy time for everyone!

--Rajeev

New feature: Set your ordering deadline

Science fair coordinators,

You can now set the ordering deadline for your website separately from your registration deadline.  (Previously, you could only set the registration deadline which affected both the ability to register for the fair as well as order supplies.)  The ordering deadline can be set from the Basic Settings page of your website, once you are logged in as the coordinator.  Once the ordering deadline has passed, your students/parents will no longer be able to order supplies, although you still can if you are logged in as the coordinator.

We strongly recommend that you set your ordering deadline to be approximately 5 weeks before your science fair.  This way, we can ship those orders out to you the day after the deadline, and your students will still have plenty of time to put together their project display board.  (Keep in mind that orders take up to 8 business days to arrive, depending on where you are located.)

A word about our shipping policy and shipping charges.  We are happy to be able to ship to you an unlimited number of full boxes free of charge.  A full box consists of 30 display boards or an equivalent mix of display boards and header boards (e.g., 25 display boards + 20 header boards).  We will also ship to you one partially full box free of charge the day after your ordering deadline.  A partially full box is anything less than 30 display boards (or equivalent).  If you need to request any additional shipments that consist of partially full boxes, you will be charged for the cost of shipping.  Try to avoid this, as shipping for these large boxes can be quite costly.

If you are using Our Science Fair to manage your science fair this year, I would also strongly recommend that you take 10 minutes to read through our brief documentation on ordering, payment, billing, and shipping.  It will probably answer a lot of questions, and avoid any unpleasant surprises.  You can access the documentation by logging in as the coordinator, and clicking on Documentation near the bottom of the left menu bar.

Thanks, and email me at rajeev@oursciencefair.com if you have any questions or concerns.

--Rajeev

New feature: Teachers can access participant data

January was a busy month over here, while we worked hard to deliver the features that you need for your science fairs.  Today we're excited to announce a new feature called "Teacher Access".

The teachers and staff at your school may need to see the list of students who are registered for the science fair. In particular, they may wish to know which students from their own classes are signed up. However, as the coordinator, you probably do not want to share your coordinator password with them, because then they they would be granted full administrative access to your account.

Now Our Science Fair includes a feature that allows you to give teachers the ability to view the list of participants without giving them the ability to make any changes to the data. To enable this, visit your Account management page, and assign a separate "Teacher password" of your choosing:

If the teacher password is blank, then teachers will not be able to access the data. If you do assign a teacher password, then you will need to somehow inform the teachers of the password. They will need to enter this password in order to be able to access the data. Make sure that the password is not shared beyond the trusted teachers and staff at your school.

Instruct your teachers to visit your science fair website, and click on the "Teachers" link in the upper-right corner:

They will be taken to a page where they will need to enter the teacher password:

Once they enter the correct password, they will be able to view the list of registered participants for the entire school. They can sort the columns, or filter the records by grade level or teacher. They can also download the data to a spreadsheet if they need to save it or manipulate it further.

If you decide to use this feature, let us know what you think ... we'd love to get your feedback!
 
--Rajeev

New feature: Option to disable parent/student photo upload

You can now choose to disable the photo upload functionality for your Our Science Fair site.  Some schools have requested this because they are concerned about violating their district's policy regarding the use of student photos. 

If you would like to disable the photo upload feature, log in to your coordinator pages, and under Site customization, go to Photo upload page.  Near the top of the page, uncheck the checkbox labeled Enable photo upload:

and then press Save.

Disabling this feature will not actually remove the Upload Photos menu item or page from your site.  However, anyone who visits that page will be presented with a brief message indicating that the feature is not supported.  In addition, you will need to make sure to remove any text from other parts of your site that refer to uploading photos, so that your visitors aren't confused by a mixed message.

I also want to take this opportunity to reassure all coordinators that choose to leave the photo upload feature enabled.  The photos uploaded by parents/students will only ever be made available to you, the science fair coordinator.  We do not ever make them publicly available, and we do not share them with anyone except you.  Currently, the only way you can get access to the photos is from the DVD that we will send you a few days before your science fair.  We are working on a way for coordinators to access the photos online, but that is not possible today.

--Rajeev

New feature: Customize the instructions for sending in check

Just a minor new feature announcement today.  You can customize the text that instructs parents on how to write the check and submit it.  Parents see this text when they order supplies and choose to pay by check.  The default text simply says, "Please write a check and send it in with your student to school."  However, some schools would like to have more specific instructions for the parents, such as taking the check to the office, giving it to the student's teacher, or placing it in a special envelope or box dedicated for the PTA.

To customize this text, log in to your coordinator pages, and under Site customization, choose Ordering page.  About three-quarters of the way down the page, you should see this:

Change the text to suit your situation, and press Save.

--Rajeev

Slide show DVDs no longer being presold

I just wanted to briefly explain a small change we made today.  We are no longer pre-selling the slide show DVD, so you won't see it on the Order Supplies page anymore.  Now, the only two items you will see are the project display board and the project header board.

The reason we removed the DVD from the ordering page is because 1.) There isn't enough interest in buying it, and 2.) We are concerned that for certain schools, we may not receive enough uploaded photos to actually produce the slide show.  In this latter case, we didn't want to end up in a situation where we had already pre-sold a bunch of DVDs to parents, and then have to refund the money because we couldn't produce the DVD.

However, you should understand that for schools where we receive enough photos (a minimum of 60 total) uploaded photos from parents, we will still produce the slide show DVD, and mail a copy to you free of charge approximately 1-2 days before your science fair.

After your science fair is over, we may still try to sell the DVD to parents via a special email offer.  By that time, hopefully many will have seen the slide show at your science fair, and we will have the confidence that we actually have something to sell them.

Let us know if you have any questions about this.

--Rajeev

New feature: Custom fields on the registration form

This weekend we launched an exciting new feature which really showcases the flexibility of Our Science Fair.

In designing the registration form where students go to sign up for your science fair, we originally built a one-size-fits-all kind of form.  But the obvious truth is that different schools have different requirements, and there's no way for us to predict what kinds of information you would like to collect from your students.  With custom fields, we no longer have to.  For example, some coordinators would like students to fill in their science project category (biology, physics, chemistry, etc.), but it's not something we wanted to put on every school's form.  Other coordinators give away t-shirts to all participants and needed students to fill in their t-shirt size on the registration form.  With custom fields, coordinators can collect whatever information they need to.

Start by logging in to the coordinator section of your site, and clicking on Register page in the left menu bar.  You will now see a new section that looks like this:

By default, to make the feature a little easier to use, we have automatically added three commonly used fields to your account:  Project category, T-shirt size, and Additional comments.  However, all of these fields are turned off by default, as shown by the lack of check marks in the Show column.

If these fields aren't what you had in mind, you can add your own by clicking the New field button.  Or you can edit the ones that are already there by clicking the pencil.  You are then taken to a screen which allows you to define the field:

The Field choices are where you can provide predefined choices for your users to select from.  However, the user will always still have the opportunity to type in a response that is not one of the listed choices, so don't worry too much if your list of choices isn't 100% complete.  If you leave the Field choices entirely blank, then the field on the registration form will be completely freeform.

The Field help text is where you can provide some helpful instructions to your users about how to fill in the field.

When you're done defining your field, click OK, and then make sure the checkbox is checked in order for the field to actually show up on your registration form:

Finally, you must click the purple Save button to save all your changes.  Now, when you visit your school's science fair site, and go to the Register page, you will see your new field about half way down the page:

When students start signing up for your fair and entering data into your custom field, you will be able to see the data they entered by visiting the Project entries page in the coordinator section.  Custom fields will show up on the far right of the table.

Note that each custom field you define will show up in exactly one place on the registration form.  This means that if you have two or more partners working on a project together, they will only be able to fill in one value for the field.  This can be a problem for things like "T-shirt size" where you really want to collect the information for each participant, not for each project entry.  There are a couple ways you can get around this limitation, and admittedly neither of them is perfect.  You could put some help text on the field instructing your users to make sure to manually type in the t-shirt sizes for each participant identified by first name.  So, for example, the user could type in "John: Medium; Jacob: Large" into the field.  This works fine because even if you provide field choices like "Small; Medium; Large" for the user to select from, they can still type their own freeform response.  The other option is to ask your students to register separately for each participant, even if they are working together.

As always, we hope you find this feature to be useful and intuitive, and definitely let us know if you run into any problems.

--Rajeev

New feature: Upload your own banner image

For a while now, we've been missing an important feature: the ability to upload your own banner image for your Our Science Fair website.  You could always change your banner image, as long as the image already existed on another website (typically the banner from your school's primary website).  But you couldn't create your own image on your computer and upload it.  Well, now you can!  The feature is pretty self-explanatory.  Simply go to the Basic Settings page, scroll down to where you see Banner image, and click the Change... button.

In the popup window that appears, click the Browse... button to locate your image on your computer, and click OK.

When you get back to the Basic Settings screen, don't forget that you have to actually press the Save button to apply your new banner to your website:

And voila!  When you go back and visit your site, you should see your new banner at the top:

Note that the banner image we used in this example wasn't the ideal choice because it doesn't stretch across the width of the entire page.  A better choice would have been an image that fits perfectly in the space allocated for the banner, which is 950 x 150 pixels.

--Rajeev

New feature: Upload your own documents and images!

We just launched a new feature that many of you will likely want to take advantage of.  Now you can upload your own documents to your science fair website, making them easily available for students and parents to view.  For example, you may have PDF (Adobe Acrobat) files, Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, etc. that you wish to publish.  To use this feature, first log in to the coordinator section of your site, and go to the new Documents and images page:

Then click on the "Browse ..." button to locate your document on your computer.  You can upload up to five documents at once, but the total maximum is 50 documents for each site.  In this example, we'll just upload one PDF file:

Clicking the Upload button will upload your document to our server, and will give you a confirmation message as well as a table showing the list of all documents that have been uploaded to date (in this case, just the one):

The important column to note here is the one titled Embed this text to link to the file.  This column contains the information you'll need in order to link to the document from any of the pages on your website.  The link in this case is doc.ashx?id=59.  For example, suppose you wanted to include a link to the document in one of the paragraphs on your home page.  Here's how you would do it:

When you now go to view your home page, it will look like this, and clicking on the blue link will take the user to the PDF we uploaded:

If you are authoring your own custom pages for your website, then simply use doc.ashx?id=59 as the URL for the link, as in the following example:

You can also upload images, and embed them into your custom pages.  Stay tuned for a future blog post on how to do that!  (If you're not already, we strongly recommend you subscribe to our blog so you don't miss out on any important announcements!)

--Rajeev

New feature: Add your own custom pages!

We're excited to announce today the launch of a new feature for all Our Science Fair users.  This highly requested feature allows you to add your own custom pages to your school's science fair website.  For example, you may choose to add dedicated pages for some of these topics, rather than trying to squeeze all of the information on the home page:

• Judging criteria
• Project deadlines, checkpoints, and schedule
• Volunteering opportunities
• Project topic selection
• Guidelines for display board layout
• etc.

To add a new page to your website, log in to the coordinator area, and select "Additional pages" from the menu on the left:

You will then see this screen:

Click the "Create New Page" button and you will be taken to a screen where you can edit the title and content for your new page.  For example, for my daughter's school, I put together a page about the different kinds of science projects that a student might do:

By default, your new page will show up in a menu bar near the top of your website with the "Menu Label" you provide.  If you prefer that the page not show up in the menu bar, simply leave this field blank.  Also note that you can add a link to this new custom page from any of the other built-in pages, simply by embedding the "Link text" shown.  You should replace the words "text to display" with something of your choice.

After saving your page, you can visit your science fair website to see what it looks like:

Notice the new menu bar near the top ... the one that reads, "Project types, Judging criteria, Schedule, Volunteering".  These are the custom pages that have been added for this site.

Back in the coordinator section, you can manage your list of custom pages:

Here, you can change the order that the pages show up in the menu bar, and you can further edit or delete any of the pages.

We hope you find this feature useful.  Please feel free to send us any questions or feedback.

--Rajeev