Verb Tense Preference in Notebook

What verb tense do judges prefer in engineering notebooks?
(I know that it is not in the rubric)

The easiest way I can think of is to use
a. past tense to refer to previous events or notebook entries,
b. future tense to refer to future events or progress that might be made in the future, and
c. present tense to refer to the progress made during the specified timeframe or project or anything that isn’t covered under the usage of past and future tense.

Follow what is engineering notebook rubric and Guide to Judging.

My recollection is that there is no requirements about Verb Tense in notebook.

Notebooks are expected to be a chronological record of a team’s progress.

Don’t overthink it.

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Why not?

Many notebookers hear the anecdotal evidence that judges just flip through the pages and put aside those notebooks that lack enough text and images. As the result, they must be thinking that, in order to show judges their high level of effort, they need to impress them by maximizing the volume of their notebook, filling pages after pages.

I find it unfortunate. Both that some judges actually do that and that many students assume that its a universal practice, where notebooks with short concise entries that have all the important details but do not burden readers with unnecessary text fluff, may not even make it to the short list of those considered for an award.

I want to believe this is not the case. I want to believe that majority of judges will recognize that a meeting entry with a single Haiku describing the gist of the testing and a single Yoda-speak line as the conclusion may require just as much, if not more, effort as the 1000 word text, essentially saying the same thing.

Am I wrong?

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Judges should looking for authentic application of design process in their notebooks appropriate for their age group. Middle school students make huge errors in spelling, grammar, etc… Some teams flub by using AI generated text in their notebooks.

My response was to does verb tense matter - depends on age group and ability to be expressive in written form. Notebooks have two utilities - 1) to communicate with team members about their development process/decisions, and 2) to communicate to outside how to recreate their journey.

The dual nature of the team documentation is important in the long run, first that it helps more successful outcomes of their product, and second, it is important in the long run if a team wishes to be afforded protection of their creations (this latter point is important in realm of intellectual property).

I can not speak to all the judges backgrounds and qualifications, but I do know that thorough documentation has a lot of benefit to a team and being able to recreate their robots.

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