What is the K-12 InVenture Prize competition?
The K-12 InVenture Prize is an invention and entrepreneurship program at Georgia Tech's Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing that challenges students to identify real-world problems and design novel solutions through analysis, creativity, and the scientific method.
The K-12 InVenture Prize and its partners host three competition events for student teams to showcase and present their inventions and invention process for judges to evaluate. The scores from judges ultimately decide whether the student teams move forward in the competition.
Who can be a judge for K-12 InVenture Prize?
We invite and welcome community members to share their expertise and feedback to our K-12 student inventors. Judges typically include Georgia Tech faculty, staff, and students as well as individuals from industry partners, but by no means does that mean that judges are exclusively from those groups! You could be a judge!
Why judge?
Judges are essential to not only the
(1) individual impact on K-12 students' learning experience but also on the
(2) community impact on helping grow the next generation of inventors and entrepreneurs!
Judges bring their expertise to evaluate student inventions and contribute direct feedback for students to take into consideration as they iterate on their inventions. Judges also provide the unique experience for students to converse with and present to professionals with whom they can become inspired to become or learn more about.
What should judges expect?
Before Judging
Judges will receive our competition rubric with categories and scoring guildelines. Judges are expected to read the rubric over prior to judging.
Judges will also receive an e-ballot from RocketJudge. K-12 InVenture Prize judging is powered by RocketJudge and can be accessed through a web browser. The RocketJudge platform provides judges with their assigned teams and sliding scales for each of our categories/criteria, reflecting our rubric. Judges will not have access to their ballots prior to the judging period, but we do send them in advance for judges who want to start judging at the very beginning of the judging period.
While Judging
There are two modes of judging: online and in-person.
Judges have the flexibility to judge at their convenience over the course of the judging period (approx. 1 week). We typically find that judges take approximately 1-2 hours to evaluate all 10-15 student projects. We welcome and appreciate judges who are open to evaluating more projects.
Judges are required to attend in-person to the event location :) In-person judging provides judges the unique opportunity to converse with student teams and ask questions about their projects. In-Person Judges typically spend 2 hours to evaluate their student inventions, depending on the number of student teams assigned and the event schedule.
After Judging
The K-12 InVenture Prize program team review all of the judges' scoring and feedback. For the Mock Pitch event, the program team synthesizes the scores and feedback and sends it to the teachers for dissemination to their students. For the Qualifier and State Finals events, the program team deliberates using the judges' scores and feedback to determine the winners that move forward to State Finals and Nationals competition, respectively. State Finals judges are welcome to stay for the Awards Ceremony. All winners will be posted on our website.