18.2731, FYI: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad

[LINGUIST Network]

LINGUIST List: Vol-18-2731. Thu Sep 20 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 18.2731, FYI: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Eastern Michigan U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>
 
Reviews: Randall Eggert, U of Utah  
         <reviews at linguistlist.org> 

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, 
and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Fatemeh Abdollahi <fatemeh at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  

To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at
http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html.

===========================Directory==============================  

1)
Date: 18-Sep-2007
From: Thomas Payne < tpayne at uoregon.edu >
Subject: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad

 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:47:23
From: Thomas Payne [tpayne at uoregon.edu]
Subject: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad
E-mail this message to a friend:
http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=18-2731.html&submissionid=156625&topicid=6&msgnumber=1  


The second annual North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad
(NACLO) will take place in February and March of 2008.

Earlier this year, 195 high school students from around the USA
participated in the first NACLO competition. Eight of the top
winners went on to compete at the International Linguistics Olympiad in St.
Petersburg, Russia, and came home with several awards, as well as many fond
memories (see www.namclo.org). In the coming year, NACLO winners
will be eligible for the International Linguistics Olympiad to be held in
the Summer of 2008 in Bulgaria.

The success of any Linguistics Olympiad program such as NACLO
depends on the collaborative efforts of many in the linguistics and
computational linguistics communities throughout the world. At this point
you can participate by:

1. Hosting a ''site'' for the North American Open competition in February.
2. Serving on a NACLO committee.
3. Creating problems, or ideas and data for problems to be used in future
Olympiads.

Hosting a site involves inviting high school students from your area to
your university on a given day in February and/or March (exact dates to be
determined). Your students and faculty will then administer the contest for
two to four hours, and then forward the high-school students' solutions to
the judges for scoring.

We earnestly invite linguists from around the world to serve on a
NACLO committee. Committees in need of members at this point are: 

Program: Creating, evaluating and scoring problems used for publicity,
practice and the actual competition for 2008.
Publicity: Creating flyers, writing and distributing press releases and
other publicity materials.
Development: Identifying and approaching potential funding sources.
Follow up: Obtaining and distributing prizes and certificates, evaluating
the program and organizing mentoring programs, summer schools, and summer
internships.
ILO team: Making travel arrangements, researching legal issues,
corresponding with competitors and families, conducting coaching sessions,
and traveling with the team to Bulgaria in the Summer of 2008.

Challenging and engaging linguistics and computational linguistics problems
are the centerpiece of any Linguistic Olympiad program. Guidelines for
problem creation can be found at
http://www.uoregon.edu/~tpayne/ProblemCreation.pdf. 

Please contact us if you have any questions or ideas for problems.

Thank you very much for your help in raising the profile of our discipline
among secondary school students. Please contact any of the executive team
members below if you have any questions or would like to participate in 2008.

Local contests or general volunteering:

Lori Levin (General co-chair 2007-2008) lsl at cs.cmu.edu 
Thomas E. Payne (General co-chair 2007-2008) tpayne at uoregon.edu 

Problem ideas or registration:

Dragomir Radev (Program chair 2007-2008) radev at umich.edu 



Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics
                     General Linguistics





 





-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-18-2731