So we started a paper notebook, but then we saw that vex had released a digital notebook using Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint. Which one is better and why? Do you still get extra points for having a bound notebook? Also, is it legal to put videos in the digital notebook?
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A lot of teams I know have switched to digital notebooking this year because multiple people can work on it at the same time, as well as the convenience of it being online, meaning the chance of you losing it is reduced.
Also, it makes up for some people’s horrifying penmanship.
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I would assume you wouldn’t get extra points for either method. Although I found as a writer that writing by hand, while it may seem less convient at first, gives you a greater sense of pride when you look back at all your work.
Of course that’s probably one of the only advantage of writing with a physical notebook. Since you can get blisters on your fingers for writing too much, and of course there’s the fact that if you mess up, you mess up and unless you’re using pencil (Which I guess is to unprofessional?) you can’t get rid of it.
Digital notebook is way easier to edit, and of course many people can edit it at the same time, and nobody needs good handwriting!
Now while it may seem easier for you to just continue writing in your physical, since copying all that into digital would be annoying, I’d totally recommend for you to write in digital.
Although for some reason my notebooker on my team wants to use a physical copy. Which proves it’s really up to you to weigh the pros and cons
(Oh and also, Google slides is a mile better than PowerPoint)
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Question answered by simply looking at the engineering notebook rubric. No need to make assumptions. This is the document the notebook judge will use to score your engineering notebook. https://kb.roboticseducation.org/hc/en-us/articles/4461349729047-Judging-Resource-Engineering-Notebook-Rubric But remember, the notebook score is just one part of Design or Excellence award: the interview is equally important.
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so true, the contents is so cool looking from when you started and the state you are right now.
I agree, finishing a paper notebook and looking back at your progress feels really nice. I started making an online notebook today and it was pretty nice. Is it legal to import videos into a digital notebook? Also, how do you submit a digital notebook when you have a competition?
This applys to all notebooks. My digital one this year has over 23k words. I am proud. Regadless if you chose to do digital or physical(its not a binary system you can do both) make it something that you can be proud of. Something that you want to show others.
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While this may not be true of every judge in the whole world, or the standard that some set, while at Vex Worlds this past year, during our design interview, our notebooker asked about whether they prefer digital or physical notebooks more.
Their response was physical, for the fact that they could easily determine that you put hard work into the writeup, and didn’t get the easy access of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V as the people with online notebooks.
While I have personally seen Digital notebooks that are so good they outrank some even good physical ones, I would suggest to do Physical, for the reason above, but also because it looks really clean.
Most of my teams are doing digital while keeping in mind that they will have to print them for tournaments. They are not depending on video content to be available.
Digital allows for collaboration and it also doesn’t require teams do their pages numerically. We have headers with deign, build, programming, competition, and personal information. This keeps it organized and judges can see progression of each separately.
The paper notebooks would have build, design, programming on three pages, and then switch to build, competition, testing. It’s hard for a judge to follow along with your story when the topic keeps changing.
It also benefits the team. A programmer can easily reference code information without sifting through pages of other content.
The rubric wants judges to see timely progress and date stamping solves that concern.
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Some competitions only allow digital notebooks, and some only allow physical notebooks.
Of course, you could just print out your digital notebook or scan your physical notebook, but it becomes very convenient to use digital, as its in an easily readable format for judges to see (if the competition only wants digital notebooks).
I was going to do it on paper, but it was quickly scrapped out, and I actually had the official physical notebook :l
It really depends on what your vex events accept in your area.
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I prefer physical notebooks because it;s easier to put drawings and it’s less janky then google slides or powerpoint, but I guess digital is easier to edit and submit…
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I don’t think so, It wouldn’t make sense anyways.
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Yeah I think so. I’d actually be very helpful to judges. Putting videos is a useful tool, so I hope they’ll let us.
I am going to throw in my 2 cents without causing more confusion. To be clear, teams may choose to have a physical or digital notebook. There is no requirement to use the RECF hardcopy or the VEX Digital templates (google or MS PPT). You can pick your documentation tool that your team is most comfortable with.
As for events, some will do remote notebook reviews - all teams will be required to provide a digital submission. For digital notebooks, a publicly accessible web link to the notebook. For hardcopy, teams will need to scan in every page of their notebook and make the document available using a link to the document hosted on a publicly accessible site. These links are submitted on RobotEvents on the team’s registered account.
For events that have in-person review of notebooks, teams will submit a hardcopy of their notebook. Either the physical notebook or a printed copy of the digital notebook.
There are benefits to both approaches for documentation. One approach will not be viewed more favorably than the other by judges.
I think that might help clarify questions about notebooks both in remote review or in-person reviews.
Feel free to ask other questions, they are good ones.
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I don’t think you can be totally confident that both digital and paper notebooks would be judged exactly the same. The simple reason being that you cannot possibly account for the variation in judges individual preferences. Would a baby boomer judge raised in the analog era on books and cursive have the same view as a Gen-Z or Millennial era judge raised on digital typed info? Do you appreciate an amazing drawing of yourself done with only a #2 pencil and a sheet of white paper, or with a digital drawing done on photoshop? Answers will undoubtably vary.
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As far as submitting the digital notebook, your coach adds the link to your notebook, preferably Google Slides, to Robotevents. Then it is there for any competition that your team attends and is always the most current version (assuming your team keeps adding to it as the season goes on.
There is no preference to digital submissions - other than it is accessible and does not require a non-traditional viewer. Google slides is one pretty much universal, so are PDF, and PPT, and Word…
The problem with stating a “preference” it makes it appear that judges will favor one format over another, and that is not the case in the judging process.
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When I judged last season at my region’s MS VIQC ERC, we piloted the new RE-based submission method for our region. We saw many different types of notebooks, both physical and online, ranging from the new EDEN software (it was noted that this made it easy to follow the design process), scanned in VEX notebooks, google docs pdfs, and even one done in VEXcode. And as a judge, at least for this tournament, I can confidently say that one format of notebook was not preferred over the other, even though we had judges both young and old alike looking at the notebooks (ranging from seniors in HS- recruited day of event by EEM to teachers and school admins).
As a judge it should be your job to look past the submission format and instead look at the content being presented to the reader. Who cares if the physical notebook in front of you has insanely detailed sketches if the content is garbled and conveys little information? Or an online notebook that may appear to have a high page count but only because the font is large to hide the lack in overall content?
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I agree that there is no “preferred” digital submission from a judging standpoint. I state that the preference for Google slides refers to the template that RECF itself has provided. The advantage to a platform like Google Slides for electronic submission is that once submitted through Robotevents, all a team needs to do is keep adding to it. There won’t be a need to submit and update for each additional event that a team participates in. There maybe other platforms that accomplish this. However, Word, PPT and pdf do not and require a new submission for each event entered.
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Is it bad that we don’t have much pictures in our notebook?
Your notebook needs pictures to effectively meet the rubric’s standards.
Notebook Rubric
Pictures add clarity and detail more effectively than words can.
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Yes, which is why the notebooker on my team abide by a “at least 1 picture per page” rule. It really helps to break large chunks of texts if anything.
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