Thousands of student-created digital products were submitted for consideration in 25+ DPOJ categories. Thank you for registering your students for the second of the STLP “Big 3” events of the year (Regionals, DPOJ, & State). This email is going out to all the STLP Coaches with students participating to help give you a better understanding of the Digital Product timeline.

Current DPOJ topics include (as of January 27th):

  1. What’s Happening Right Now with DPOJ?

  2. What Should DPOJ Judges Expect?

  3. What Should Students Be Doing?

  4. What is the Digital Products Timeline?

What is the Digital Products Timeline?

DPOJ is just the start of the journey toward announcing the 2023 STLP State Champions for each category. The graphic below helps lay out the next several weeks of effort that will go into guiding your student’s creations through the judging process on the way to possibly being crowned “State Champions”.  We’ve already moved through the “Students Create” and “Coaches Curate” portion of the timeline and we’re heading into the “Judges Review” section ahead of everyone coming together in Lexington on April 19th to celebrate our 2023 STLP Digital Product Champions (on stage in Rupp Arena with special host, Kelsey Starks from KET’s News Quiz).

 

What’s Happening Right Now (posted January 27)?

Registration closed on Jan. 18th. Since then, we’ve been busy…

  • Working with STLP Coaches to try and verify URLs to student products were shared correctly, with proper open permissions,

  • Helping STLP Coaches with last minute changes and adjustments to their entries,

  • Contacting and working with STLP Coaches to verify they have provided a judge (or judges),

  • Sorting and organizing each category into manageably sized judging groups by division

  • Coordinating volunteer judges based on need and requested judging assignments

All these gears mesh into one giant machine we call, DPOJ. It’s already an intricate process but we take it up a notch by putting extra effort in to make the scoring process fair, easy, and smooth for volunteer judges.

What Should Judges Expect (posted January 27)?

There are two big upgrades to DPOJ for 2023:

  1. All scoring and organizing of DPOJ will happen within Google Classroom

  2. The awesome Erin Waggoner (former CIO Jessamine Co., former KySTE President, all-time STLP Advocate, and current KDE Digital Learning Team leader) is on point for supporting the process (she’s also the mastermind behind the plan for organizing this unprecedented mountain of DPOJ entries)

Thanks to those upgrades, here’s what you can let judges know to be on the lookout for:

  • Each judging category (Digital Art, Book Trailer, etc.) will have its very own Google Classroom

  • Those Google Classrooms will house instructions, judging assignments, rubrics, and resources for scoring the category

  • Judges can expect to receive Google Classroom invite via their provided email address between today and Monday afternoon.

  • Upon receiving the Classroom invite, use the code to join the “class” for their assigned category

  • Every judge will have several days to complete their assignment and turn in scores

What Should Students Be Doing?

  • At this point, students are done until it’s time to celebrate them at State

  • The student focused portion of the Digital Product timeline occurred from the start of school until the DPOJ registration deadline

  • Now, their digital creations are off on a journey of review and feedback for several weeks

  • Entries will automatically advance to Semi-Final and Finals scoring using the existing URL you provided

  • Students will not update or change their entries…they are off the hook for any more work!

  • Finals judges at State does not require students to be present. In fact, many categories will be finalized in the days just ahead of State.