<p>International</a> Sustainable World (Energy, Engineering & Environment) Project Olympiad - Home</p>
<p>has anyone heard of this science competition??
anyone attended?</p>
<p>Never heard of it. Wonder if our school would consider getting involved? It looks interesting, and has some good sponsors.</p>
<p>Whatever the merits of the competition, the organizers have misappropriated the word “olympiad”.</p>
<p>An olympiad competition in science always has meant a uniform examination for all competitors. The exam is always a written set of problems. There may be some live performance involving in solving the exam, such as a chalkboard presentation of a proof to examiners (math), submission of a computer program (informatics), or a lab experiment (chemistry), but to the extent possible those tasks are evaluated on an objective and uniform basis.</p>
<p>i’ll bring back more info after the competition ( i won’t say olympiad!!!) and tell you more…</p>
<p>This thread is a bit old… but a friend of mine and I are looking to enter this fair. Any feedback?</p>
<p>so we went 2 years ago…(we have previous experience at intel isef and isweeep as well as regional and local science fairs and thought it would be fun to give this a try)
kids have attended a charter school run by turkish people. isweeep and inespo are also run by similar groups. they really love the kids and encourage science fair participation. they also enjoy presenting a wonderful spectacle for opening ceremonies,bring in lots of local politicians to show off their program and have a big build up for awards ceremonies
inespo is no different.
it seems like it hasn’t quite hit its stride yet and we aren’t returning
we set up w no problem, the opening ceremony was as expected, lots of fun kids esp from places like Kazakhstan,Macedonia etc
the judging was super disappointing and that’s why we aren’t going back. the first day the kids sat at their booths for 8 hours waiting for a judge. turns out they decided to judge alphabetically by country and USA is near the end! returned the next day to find that most of the judges had not shown up due to an important soccer match so they were super short on judges. after traveling all the way to Holland and sitting around for 2 days we got less than 30 seconds of judging.
kids did well but the competition ran out of money and gave 10% of advertized award money. we don’t care about awards; its just fun to present and that was really lacking due to lack of judges.also the one winner they picked to represent Holland (they had intl and local winners) just made a little model city out of Styrofoam…
it was an interesting experience but we are not doing it again. if we go abroad again it ll just be for a vacation.
perhaps you will have better luck and they will have the judging better organized. otherwise, its really not worth your time and money and energy. just one opinion…you might feel differently!</p>
<p>i was reading the title again and want to clarify since i think i read title too quickly and mixed up inespo and isweeep!</p>
<p>iweeep is in houston. we went 3 times so far and it is improving every year. its a lot of fun and great practice for isef. they are pretty well organized, the ceremonies are super fun, they give tours of nasa etc and feed you. expenses are all covered and there are lots of fun kids. lots more relaxed than isef and good prizes. you should go if you can to this one!</p>
<p>I mixed up the title too when I posted on this thread. I meant INESPO, but we’re looking to enter both ISWEEEP and INESPO, so all feedback is great! Thanks so much!</p>
<p>Both ISWEEEP and INESPO are among competitions run by the Gulen Movement (which also runs 130+ charter schools in the US such as Chesapeake Science Point in Maryland).</p>
<p>The project selection is very questionable; a high-circulation Dutch newspaper found that at INESPO, 3/4 of the projects were coming from Gulen schools (i.e., schools run by the Gulen Movement); heres a translation:
[June</a> 27, 2011 Netherlands - Gulen in the International Press](<a href=“http://gulenforeignmedia.■■■■■■■■■■/june-27-2011-netherlands.html]June”>June 27, 2011 Netherlands - Gulen in the International Press)
Having the same network run the competition and the attending schools creates a huge conflict of interest. In brief, the competitions exist to generate awards for the schools so that demand is created for them; these schools have very high tuition and generate a large amount of revenue for the network.</p>
<p>Also, there are many duplicate projects, which keep the same name but change student names. One project from Kazakhstan appeared with the exact same title at 4 different Olympiads in 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011; each time the word thiosulphate was misspelled as tiosulphate. The student names changed each time. Another project had the same title (down to the misspelling of the word territory as terrytory) as a conference paper with completely different (Turkish) authors. Heres a list of recycled projects:
[Olympiad</a> irregularities - A Guide to the Gulen Movement’s Activities in the US](<a href=“http://turkishinvitations.■■■■■■■■■■/olympiad-irregularities.html]Olympiad”>Olympiad irregularities - A Guide to the Gulen Movement's Activities in the US)</p>
<p>All the Gulen project olympiads (ISWEEEP, INESPO, GENIUS, INEPO etc) have a disproportionately high number of participants from Central Asia, the Balkans, Turkey and sub-Saharan Africa. This is because the Gulen Movement is especially active in building schools in these regions. There is every reason to think that project selection is biased and based on factors other than the quality of the students own effort and creativity.</p>
<p>I know that the charter schools in the US are free tuition and the ones in maryland at least are run by the state board of Ed with public taxes. there are Turkish teachers in math but not science/soc studies etc
in maryland every kid has to do a science fair. my kids went to middle school at the charter school before transitioning to high school and there was no proselytizing by the Turkish math teachers or the puerto rican Spanish teacher or the other American teachers of various christian religions.
isweeep attracts some great projects and we see kids at ISEF we met at isweeep. if your student enjoys science fairs and meeting interesting kids isweeep is worth going to… INESPO not so much!</p>
<p>Of course there are some great projects at ISWEEEP and INESPO. That does not mean that the judging is fair or done by a disinterested party. Any fixed match will have some good players. </p>
<p>To clarify, the reference to steep tuition was for schools in other countries - Central Asia, Africa, the Balkans, etc, where the Gulen schools cater to the elite. And, yes, of course the charter schools do not charge tuition, but they are still a source of revenue for those who run them. <a href=“Charter Schools Tied to Turkey’s Gulen Movement Grow in Texas - The New York Times”>Charter Schools Tied to Turkey’s Gulen Movement Grow in Texas - The New York Times;
<p>ISWEEEP and INESPO have no explanation for the unusually high proportion of projects coming from Turkey, the Balkans, Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa - all areas where the Gulen Movement happens to have many schools and major business interests. </p>
<p>All these project olympiads need to disclose how they are selecting finalist projects, to reassure the public that it is done by disinterested parties. It is not enough to say they have some good projects, or that there is some overlap between ISEF and them. The proportion of awards from Gulen schools at INESPO and ISWEEEP has been much, much higher than at ISEF. There is no satisfactory explanation for this.</p>
<p>Thanks guys, this was really helpful! We decided not to go to INESPO this year. Have you guys ever heard of IRIS (India), INEPO (Turkey), or MOSTRATEC (Brazil?) It looks like all of these provide funding, so I think we’ll apply next year.</p>
<p>what a great year! so many great isweeep projects entered from sts/isef prize winners…love isweeep for super fun experience. love isef for great competitors/judges. both are totally worth going to.
kids havent done mostratec but id love to hear people’s experiences!!</p>