Do You "Know Excel" or Will You Say "No Excel"

My brother Timothy Rey called me. "Dan - would you like to help me with a poetry contest? I need judges." I'm not sure what my brother (who has known me almost all my life) has forgotten about me, but poetry judging has never come up as one of my strengths. I have been involved with Toastmasters for over 10 years, but that is about effective speech communication and constructive feedback and I've heard very little poetry at the meetings I have attended. It turns out Timothy (who I would list poetry judging, creatation, spoken word and much more as his strengths) needed someone who knew Excel to add up the judges feedback to determine the winner! I will be doing this again next year with my brother in mid-February. It is an unique intersection of our gifts and I always look forward to it.

"Dan - would you like to help me out with a poetry contest?  I need judges."        

Timothy provided me a break down of how the judges calculate their scores and all of the raw templates or files are on Poetry Out Louds website https://www.poetryoutloud.org/teachers-organizers/organize-a-contest/. Those who "Know Excel" are probably super interested in the formulas and how the multiple sheets calculate all the statistics to bring you to the top three winners, but if you are in the "No Excel" camp, the fact that this spreadsheet has multiple columns, places for you to enter names, multiple sheets (accessed in the lower left corner) - this must be overwhelming (and for those in the "I don't judge poetry" like me, the contest evaluation criteria and evaluation criteria and tips are overwhelming). I could do the accuracy job, but there is no way I would want to judge anything else related to the reading of the poetry.

The Poetry Out Loud Sample Tally Sheet XLS file has three rounds setup as sheets at the bottom of the workbook. Besides using the Round 1, Round 2 and Round 3 tabs in the lower right, you can navigate ANY Excel Workbook with multiple sheets by typing the CTRL + PgUp keys or the CTRL + PgDn keys at the same time. Super helpful Excel tip

You can navigate ANY Excel Workbook with multiple sheets by typing the CTRL + PgUp keys or the CTRL + PgDn keys at the same time.        

The spreadsheet was really well thought out. You replace [Contestant 1] - [Contestant 20] with the names of the contestants. So how does the spreadsheet save and reuse the [Contestant 1] info when you type it in?

When using Excel, it's easy to move down a column of numbers, you just press enter and you are automatically taken to the next row in the same column. This makes it easy to fill out. The spreadsheet template also has validation so that you don't type a value that is out of range for the scoring (like 9)

So you type in the contestants name, enter the 3 or 4 judges evaluations and then you are all set for the next contestant. I have lived through enough mishaps, that between the contestants, I would backup the spreadsheet by saving it and occassionally copy it to a thumb drive or external USB stick just in case.

You realize with how the spreadsheet works, reading the poem and following the rules as outlined can make or break your score. Points are taken off for adding words, leaving words out, requiring a prompt of the next line. If you didn't memorize your 2 poems, things aren't going to go well even if you knocked the reading out of the park!

After all this (two rounds, multiple contestants, scoring and putting those scores into the spreadsheet), you get to do the fun part and that's to determine the winner!

There's information about tie breaking, an entire sheet with instructions on how to use the spreadsheet and the scores are kept private (judges scores and feedback is not provided to the student or the teacher). It's a fun contest and whether you "Know Excel" or choose to say "No Excel", I hope you've learned something new reading this today!

Fast forward to this past year. COVID-19 changed everything about the contest. The poetry recitations were recorded. The judges filled out their scores electronically (using a Google form) and I still used Excel to do the heavy lifting of tallying up the scores. Great use case of Excel to assist with deteriming a winner!