Contest Coordinator Instructions

Topics

• Your Caribou Coordinator Account
• Coordinator Homepage Tools
• Contest Rules
• Before Contest Day
• Contest Day
• After the Contest / Cup
• Voluntary School Ranking

These links are guides or materials meant to help you run Caribou Contests.

These tools are used to deal with Contest-Day issues.

These tools are used to keep track of student accounts and their validity.

These are tools for keeping your Caribou Coordinator and School information up-to-date.

These are tools for reviewing your students' results and printing certificates.

Please note, to maintain confidentiality, you can only view the results of your own students, not those of other Coordinators at the same school.

Make sure your account information is up-to-date with Edit My Account. Update your email address if it changes. Check the box "Allow Caribou to Contact Me" to receive updates about upcoming contests, and "Allow Third Party Payments" to allow parents to make purchases for students in your account.

Make sure your School's information is up-to-date with Edit School e.g. if there is a change in name or address. This will update it for all Caribou Coordinators registered with the School. It is important that the Time Zone be correct, as this determines (along with your School's Contest Time Window) when your students can start the contest.

If your workplace has changed and you want to move your account to your new school, use Change School. There is no need to create another Caribou Coordinator account if you switch schools, and the students registered under you in past years will not be affected.

By default, students registered at a school can start the contest at any time between 7:30AM-3:30PM in their local time zone (the school's time zone, which can be changed on Edit School). This is the Contest Time Window. Caribou Coordinators at a school can use Shift My Contest Time Window to move this window by up to 4 hours forwards or backwards. This can be useful for Afterschool programs, cases where students are not allowed to write at school (e.g. ban on extra-curriculars), or in cases where there is a conflict of time (e.g. all-day school sporting event on a Contest Day)

Please note, Caribou Coordinators can shift the Contest Time Window for their school at any time, even on Contest Days, and this shifts the Time Window for all Coordinators at the school. It will not revert on its own, so make sure to shift your time window back to the default 7:30AM-3:30PM if this was to deal with a temporary issue.

• Register your school's IP by clicking 'Update My School IP' on the Edit My Account page. If you do not have an IP registered, you will also be prompted to add one whenever you log in. The IP will be registered automatically, you do not need to find the actual number.

  Why do we need this?

  • We use your school's IP to verify whether students are writing the contest at school. If a student signs in on a computer that is not on the school network, their Coordinator receives an alert in the Results email after the contest. This is only for your information. You can ignore the alerts if you know that students wrote at school (your school may have more than 1 network) or if you know that their IP address should not match your school's (i.e. students have permission to write at home during school closures).

  How does this work?

  • An Internet Protocol Address is like a postal code for your computer. In most IP addresses, the first two numbers identify the computer network, so when you update your IP on a school computer, we can then verify that students are on school computers when they log in on contest day.

  What if my school has more than one IP?

  • In this case, register your school's main IP address. Currently it is only possible to register one IP address.

    When students write the contest from other IPs, you will receive a notification saying their IP does not match, but this will not stop them from accessing the contest and you can ignore the alert since you know it is normal for the IP to differ.

  For more information

  • You can check out the Wikipedia page on IP addresses.

    There's also a nice description at What Is My IP Address.

An Access Code is a 12-character code starting with the Caribou Cup year. For example, 2021C4R1B0US.

You can think of an Access Code as a Student's account. All account information like the student's name, purchases, and test entries are associated with their Access Code.

Each student needs a single Access Code to participate in 1, 2, ... or all 6 contests in the Caribou Cup (July 1 – June 30).

Access Codes…

• do not carry over to the next Caribou Cup
• are associated with a particular grade level
• become linked automatically with the student’s name upon first sign-in

There are a few ways to get Access Codes, depending on your situation:

• If you live in a country where Caribou has a Country Representative or where participating in Caribou is free

  Contest participation from a small number of countries is free, currently they are Ghana, Lebanon, Mali, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda, Ukraine.

  Caribou is also lucky to have partnerships with educators in other countries who promote and organize the contests locally.

  In both of these cases, please use the Contact Us page, making sure to select your country so that your message reaches the appropriate person.

• If you have a Voucher

  A Voucher is a 10-digit code e.g. 2020W4P17I.

  Go to Redeem Voucher Codes to exchange your voucher for Contest Participation. Only Caribou Coordinators can redeem vouchers.

  When you redeem a Student Voucher, an Access Code is generated in your account and can be found on Manage & Print Access Codes.

  When you redeem a School Voucher, you can then generate as many Access Codes as you need on Get Access Codes

  For more about vouchers, see the Voucher Information page.

• Get Grade K/1 Access Codes (free)

  It is free to participate in the Grade K/1 levels all year. Anyone can get free Grade K/1 Access Codes at any time during the year, and Grade K/1 Access Codes are automatically valid for the entire year. There are 2 ways to get Grade K/1 Access Codes:

  1. Get Access Codes - You can use this page to generate as many Grade K/1 Access Codes as you need at any time of the year.
  2. Online Shop - You can make a free purchase of Grade K/1 Access Codes in the Online Shop. Parents can also register Grade K/1 students to your Contact account this way, but you must have 'Allow Third Party Payments' enabled in your account.

• Get free Access Codes valid only for the October contest

  • The October contest is free to try for all grade levels. If the students would like to continue participating after the October contest, their Access Code must be converted to be full-year-valid by a purchase in the Online Shop (see below) or by redeeming a Voucher (see above).

    To get free Access Codes for the October contest, use the form on Get Access Codes to create as many as you need for each grade.

• Get Access Codes valid for the full year

  • To get full-year-valid codes (valid for all 6 contests) there are two options:

    1. School Wide Contest Access - in the Online Shop purchase 'School Wide Contest Access' or the 'All-Inclusive School Wide Pass'. Any Access Codes you already created (i.e. free October Access Codes) and any future Access Codes you create with Get Access Codes will be valid for any or all of the 1, 2, 3.. 6 contests in the Caribou Cup.
    
    
    2. Individual Contest Participation - in the Online Shop purchase 'Grade X/Y Contest Participation' or 'Individual All-Inclusive with Grade X/Y Contest Participation'. If your students already have free October Access Codes, in the Shop make sure to select 'DO have an Access Code already' so the credit goes to these Access Codes. If you select 'DO NOT have an Access Code yet', new Access Codes will be created.
       If the school is asking parents/guardians to pay for contest participation, they can purchase Contest Participation and select your Coordinator account to register the student. Please make sure you have 'Allow Third Party Purchases' enabled in your account with Edit My Account. If it is not enabled, the parents will not be able to register their child(ren) under your Coordinator account.

    For more information about these options and pricing, please see the Products & Prices page.

    If you or your school is paying by cheque, but you do not think the cheque will get to Caribou in time before the contest, then please Contact Us with the invoice number and we can lend you the payment in the meantime to allow you to use the purchase right away.

We do not recommend manually assigning names to Access Codes: it is time-consuming and could lead to errors. Instead, on or before the Contest Day, give each student an Access Code for the correct grade level. Once they sign in for the first time, the first and last name they’ve entered are linked to their Access Code. Student Names and their associated Access Codes can then be viewed, printed, or correct if necessary on the page Manage & Print Access Codes.

When purchasing individual Contest Participation in the Online Shop, it is possible but not necessary, to enter student names to be linked to the created Access Codes. When Student Access Codes are created using Get Access Codes or Redeem Voucher Codes, they are not linked to any student name.

It is also possible to assign Student Names to Access Codes on Manage & Print Access Codes. Again, this is not recommended, but you can choose to do this if you find it easier.

Every student should have only 1 Access Code, and that Access Code should be for their contest grade level. If a student has more than 1 Access Code, their Caribou Cup rank could be impacted. If they have an Access Code for the wrong level, they might not be able to participate in the correct contest level, and their results may be disqualified.

To view all your Access Codes and the Student Names linked to them, go to Manage & Print Access Codes.

1. First, verify the Access Codes are for the correct grades. When you generate codes in Get Access Codes or when you Redeem a Student Voucher you specify the grade level you want. When you purchase contest access in the Online Shop the codes will be for the grade you specified as well. When you distribute Access Codes to your students, please give them an Access Code for the correct contest level.
   • If a student has an Access Code for the wrong level, use Manage & Print Access Codes to erase their name from that Access Code and give them an Access Code from the correct level.
   • If a student has an Access Code with no grade level, they appear on Manage & Print Access Codes under 'Students With No Assigned Grade'. This can happen if a parent made a purchase for an item other than Contest Participation but did not enter their child's Access Code. In this case, you can use the form 'Set Student Grade' that appears on Manage & Print Access Codes to assign a contest level to this Access Code. If the student has another Access Code, you can merge their two accounts together with Merge Two Student Accounts so they can access their purchase and the contests from a single account.
2. Second, verify that each student has only 1 Access Code:
• If a student has somehow been given two Access Codes but at least 1 is unused (no contests or purchases attached to it), then erase their name from an unused Access Code, save changes, and make sure the student knows which Access Code they should use for upcoming contests.
• If a student has two Access Codes but both Access Codes have information that should be kept (e.g. contest entries, purchases, GeomeTree progress), then use Merge Two Student Accounts.

Please note: you cannot merge two student accounts if they both have entries in the same contest − in this case, Contact Us for help merging the accounts.

Each student needs only one valid current-year Access Code for their grade level to participate in all the contests in a Caribou Cup Year (1 July – 30 June). If a student does not have a valid current-year Access Code, they cannot write the contests. As Coordinator, you should check that your students codes are valid. Sometimes, mistakes are made when registering a student, and it it better to resolve such situations before the contest.

To view all your Access Codes and to verify their validity, go to Manage & Print Access Codes.

1. First, verify that you have codes for the current year. Codes do not carry over from the previous year, they must be new for this year. You can tell they are new by looking at the first 4 digits of the code. It should be the year at the end of this Caribou Cup. For example, for the 2019-2020 Caribou Cup, the access codes all start with 2020. On Manage & Print Access Codes, the current Caribou Cup is selected by default in the Year drop-down. If you do not have Access Codes yet for this Caribou Cup, follow the instructions in the section above.


2. Second, verify that your Access Codes are valid for the next contest:
• If the next contest is October, any code from this year will work because the October contest is free.
• If the next contest is November or a later contest, the codes must be full-year-valid Access Codes. Follow the instructions in the above sections to get Access Codes valid for the full year.
• Even if you have already made a purchase, you should check that it worked and the codes are valid. Go to Manage & Print Access Codes then ‘Edit Names and Credits’ for a grade level: you will see a list of all your Access Codes and Student Names linked to them. The Access Codes are valid for the Caribou Cup year if there is a checkmark in the column 'Caribou Cup Valid'.
• If you have unused individual Contest Participation credits from a purchase or voucher, they will appear in the box 'Unused Caribou Cup Credits'. You can assign these credits to an existing Access Code by clicking the box under 'Caribou Cup valid', or create a new Access Code on Get Access Codes to which to give the unused credit.
• If a student has an Access Code that is not Caribou Cup valid, but Contest Participation has been purchased for this student, use Manage & Print Access Codes to assign the credit or move it from another Access Code.
• If the wrong grade was chosen when purchasing individual Contest Participation or when redeeming a Voucher, and you do not have enough full-year-credits in the correct contest level to give the student a full-year-valid Access Code, then Contact Us to move the credit to another contest level or if necessary refund the original purchase.

• Depending on your situation you may need to book space for students to write the contest, such as a library or computer lab and reserve devices connected to the school network for them to use (i.e. Computer, iPad, phone, etc.). As calculators are not permitted, we recommend having pencil and paper on hand.
• We recommend testing your equipment before the contest by running previous contests on Take a Past Contest and interactive Games from our website. Please also ensure the computers or other devices are on, charged, up-to-date, and connected to the school network and internet before students arrive to write the test. Please also check that the touch screen/mousepad/mouse/keyboard is functioning correctly.
• If students are participating from home, please do your best to ensure they have a quiet test environment. Encourage students and parents to try the contest interface and games on their home devices and ensure that these are charged and up-to-date. In areas with poor internet connections, we also recommend that other household members limit their internet usage during the test period.

To prepare for a scenario where you cannot run the contest yourself, we recommend leaving a copy of the Contest Day Guide (can be found on your Coordinator Homepage) in your preferred language, your Caribou Coordinator sign-in information (email, password), as well as a list of participating students and their access codes. You can print off such a list by signing in, going to Manage & Print Access Codes and selecting 'Print Names and Codes'.

To prepare for a scenario where students cannot write the contest at school, please ensure that students have saved their Access Code on a device (e.g. personal phone) or stationary (e.g. weekly planner) that they will surely have with them at home. You may want to send an information sheet home with the Upcoming Contest Dates and a reminder about your School's Time Window within which students will be able to start the contest. If possible, also give parents their child(ren)'s Access Codes and make sure they have an email address/phone number at which they can contact you if a problem occurs where you should use your Contest Day Tools.

All of the upcoming contest dates are listed on the Caribou Cup Participation page which is linked on the hompage, on your Coordinator Homepage, in the menu under Contests, and on the Student Homepage. Many teachers send a note home with the contest dates so parents can plan ahead and ensure their child does not miss a contest day.

At least two weeks before each contest, we announce the interactive question and history question (if applicable) in the Caribou News on the homepage, as well as in an email sent to all Coordinators (who have enabled 'Allow Caribou to Contact Me' in their account) and student or parent subscribers. A day or two before the contest, we send a last-minute reminder to Coordinators. These announcements and more are also made on our Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, which you are welcome to follow.

Please inform your students about the upcoming interactive question and/or history question so they have enough time to prepare. They can sign in with their name and Access Code to play the interactive games without the 5-minute time limit. The History page can be found in the main menu under Prepare in all the languages we offer. The featured interactive game and history page are blocked starting around Tuesday noon EST before the contest, so it is important that students practice ahead of time.

• To familiarize students with our contest platform and get them excited for the challenges of the upcoming contest, you can help them prepare using our free/paid content

  Practice using old contests

  • The previous October contest’s questions and solutions are free to all on Take a Past Contest and View Written Solutions. Anyone with a Caribou Cup valid Access Code can use past contests from this Caribou Cup for practice. Other contests are available for purchase in the Online Shop. Individual contest years and all-inclusive packages are available, and these can be purchase for a whole school, for a Coordinator account, or for a single student.

  Watch our videos

  • Check out our channels on YouTube and Dailymotion for step-by-step solutions to old contest questions, math and logic puzzles, math history and more.

  Try out the interactive games

  • Every contest contains an interactive question in the form of a math or logic game from our Games Page. Public access to these games is limited to 5 minutes per day, so students should sign in with their Access Code for unlimited access to practice the games to prepare for the next contest, or just for fun! Caribou is always working on adding new games.

  Purchasable content

  • Use our Calcrostic puzzle book to guide your students in solving these common contest challenges, or further their (and your) understanding of geometry, logic games, maze games, formal mathematics and more by diving into our online mini-courses. You can purchase access to these individually or get the whole lot with an All-Inclusive purchase in the Online Shop.

• Follow the steps in the Contest Day Guide for getting students signed in, responding to potential problems, and ending the contest. Here are the Contest Day Guide in English. You can find it in more than 7 more languages on your Coordinator Homepage or in the menu under Coordinators.
• To make coordinating participation easier, the contest is run over two days, always a Wednesday and a Thursday. It is recommended to run the contest on only one day to minimize communication between students, but you can spread it over two days if necessary.
• Students can start the contest on one of these two days, between 7:30AM and 3:30 PM local time by default. This window can be shifted earlier or later using 'Shift My Contest Time Window', before and even on contest days. Once the student has clicked ‘Start the Contest’ and signed in, they will have 50 consecutive minutes to complete the test. However, the last possible time to start the contest is 18:30 EST on the Thursday. A student can finish the contest after this time, but they must start the contest before 6:30PM Thursday.
• Please ensure that students are aware of the rules (i.e. No calculators, no help from others/the internet) before writing and that they will have the full 50 minutes to write the test.
• Make sure your students have functioning equipment to write the test (computer, iPad…) as well as their Access Codes.
• Please remind students not to discuss the contest with students who have not yet written. Some students might finish the test early: you can send them back to their normal classroom or prepare another activity for them to do to avoid disturbing the other students. Please note that many of our website’s features are disabled during contests to avoid slowing down our servers, namely contest and cup rankings. Students can play our interactive games if they finish early, except for the game featured on the contest as this is blocked on Contest Days.
• If you use a real or fake student account to test that the contest is working, use Remove a Test Entry to delete the entry before the contest is over. Otherwise, it will be ranked and have an effect on real students' ranking. If you forget to remove it in time, contact Caribou to have it removed.

If you have any questions, please consult our Help / FAQ page.

Despite your and our preparation, problems do happen. When they do, please remember you have these tools at your disposal on your Coordinator homepage:

1. Increase Test Time :
   Adds 5 minutes every time by shifting the student’s start time 5 minutes later
   Example: the internet is down for 5 minutes, so you add 5 minutes to your students’ tests.


2. Remove a Test Entry :
   Removes the whole test entry, allowing the student to start anew.
   Example: just when your students started the test, there was a fire drill, so you remove all their entries to let them sit the contest.


3. Shift My Contest Time Window :
   Allows you to shift the contest time window when your students can start the contest earlier or later.
   Example: some students cannot start the contest until 3:45pm because of a school trip, so you move your window forward in time by 1 hour.


4. Manage & Print Access Codes :
   Allows you to see all your access codes, the names of students associated with them, how many contest entries they have, and whether their code is valid for the full-year.
   Example: a student forgets their access code or has their access code but can’t sign in, you look at this page to see if their access code or name is wrong.
   

The fastest way to solve a problem on Contest Day is finding the answer to your concern on our Help Page. If you cannot find the solution to your problem on our Help Page, you can Contact Us, but please be aware that it may take time for us to respond.

Results and Rankings are calculated and released on the evening of the second day of the contest (Thursday, EST). Students and Coordinators cannot see the contest results, rankings, answers, or solutions until the contest is over for everyone.

The last time to start a Caribou Contest is 18:30 EST on the Thursday, so all contest entries are submitted around 1 hour later.

When all entries have been submitted:

• Around 20:00 (8:00PM) EST, the contests are marked and the results and statistics become available. You can see Statistics and Rankings for a certain contest, level, or the Caribou Cup under Results in the main menu.


• On Thursday night or on Friday, an email summary of student results is sent to all Caribou Coordinators who have participating students. This email can also contain information about jumps in rank or differences in IP domains, but these are automatically generated, only for your information, and can be ignored if you know there was no misconduct.


• Students can log in to see their updated results and rankings for the Contests and for the Caribou Cup.


• You can log in to see a summary of your students' results and rankings at the bottom of the Coordinator Homepage under 'My School Results & Certificates'. Click on a link under My Students' Results to view your students' performance for that contest and grade level.


• Contest results and rankings rarely change and are finalized around a week after the contest.

The contest answers and solutions are made available immediately after the contest is marked. Students can sign in to view their Contest Results which show them which questions they answered correctly or incorrectly. You can also see this when viewing students' results. After a contest, we recommend going through the questions and answers with your students. Our detailed statistics show you which types of questions your students excelled in, and for which types of questions they may need more practice and guidance.

Please note: When Students write the contest, the order of questions is randomized, so it is normal for the questions to be in a different order when reviewing results.

Answers: To get the list of answers for a contest, you can:

• Scroll down to Results Overview table on your Coordinator Homepage. Click on the link 'Answers' to get the list of correct answers for each question on that contest.
• View your Students' Results for a single Caribou Contest (via the links in the main menu or on your Homepage), and scroll down until you see the Questions. The options highlighted in green are the correct answers.

Solutions: Caribou writes and translates detailed solutions for the contest questions. Access to Solutions can be purchased in the Online Shop along with access to past contests for practice and their solutions. The Solutions for the previous October contest are free to access on View Written Solutions.

To get the Solutions:

• Scroll down to Results Overview table on your Coordinator Homepage. Click on the link 'Solutions' to see the list of Questions. Click on 'Show Solution' to see the solution for that question.
• View your Students' Results for a single Caribou Contest (via the links in the main menu or on your Homepage), and scroll down until you see the Questions. If you have access to Solutions, you will see a 'Show Solution' button beneath each Question.
• Go to View Written Solutions (in the menu under Prepare > Previous Tests) and select the contest you would like to see Solutions for.

For every student, for every contest and for the Caribou Cup, you and your students can print/download Certificates of Achievement (with rank) and/or Certificates of Participation (without rank). Certificates of Achievement (with rank) are not available for K/1 contest participants. There are a few ways to get certificates:

• Click on the link 'Download/Print' under 'Certificates' or 'Cup Certificates' in the Results Overview table on your Coordinator Homepage.
• Click on 'My School Contest Results' or 'My School Caribou Cup Results' on your Coordinator Homepage or in the main menu under Coordinators. Select the Caribou Contest or Cup you want to print certificates for, choose 'No' for Printer-Friendly, and Submit. Underneath the table of Student Results click on the button 'Print Certificates'.
• You can also select a single student name in the Student Results table to see the results and print certificates for just that student.

As Caribou Coordinator, you can customize the certificates for your students:

• Participation/Achievement:You can choose to print certificates with ranking (achievement) or without their ranking (participation).
• Ranking Type: You can choose from School, School Board, Province/State, Country, or World ranking.
• Custom Ranking: The name of the ranking can be omitted or customized (e.g. if a student from another school is participating with you, you can put their real school's name).
• Student Name: You can change the student name that shows on the certificate (e.g. if your students have pseudonyms).
• Language: Currently certificates can be printed in English or in French.

In the Results Overview table on your Coordinator Homepage, you can also print a Teacher's Certificate of Appreciation!

At the end of the Caribou Cup, so after the results are announced and finalized for the May contest, some students are rewarded with cash prizes. There is a prize pool for each grade level (exluding the K/1 level), and these amounts are awarded to top-ranking students in each grade according to our algorithm. Please note that for the lower grades, as the prize pool is smaller and the contests are easier with many students ranking in 1st place, it is possible that a student in 1st place does not get a prize, as our algorithm will randomly choose in some cases a few students to share the pool, rather than hundreds of students receiving only pennies. There is also a Participation Prize draw, where each contest written counts as an entry into a draw. This helps encourage students who would otherwise stop participating when they fall out of the top ranks.

Visit the Prizes page for more information about how the prize amounts are allocated.

If one of your students has won a prize, we will contact you using the email registered to your Coordinator account. Please ensure that you can receive emails from Caribou Contests. You can use Test My Email Address to see whether Caribou's emails are being blocked.