National biology Olympiads or NBOs, as we call them are being activated now a days. A  promising International Biology Olympiads which is going to be organized in a different part of the world is inviting gifted students from all over the world. 2 local schools have excelled in the British Biology Olympiad, securing a bundle of medals in the national competition. ...
Skills Checklist for IBO2004 Practical Examinations
In accordance with the official IBO Guide Book (Edition 12, November 2003),a wide range of skills will be tested in the IBO2004 Practical Examinations.The four IBO2004 Practical Examinations will each have a theme:• Molecular • Cellular • Organismal • Environmental
download Gecko Gazzete edition2, the latest newsletter of 15th IBO.

Look! what AB of IBO has decided upon our proposal

Look! what AB of IBO has decided upon our proposal: A. Number of questions Iran advocated in a written proposal that 50 good quality and good discriminating  questions are appropriate for the IBO (25% should be A type (multiple choice) and 75% B type). This triggers a discussion, what number of questions is the optimum. The IBO covers a broad range of fields and topics and this requires many questions in order to offer a balanced task. As the IBO is a competition, there is a need to have a good discriminating power of the tasks and this also requires that the number of questions should not be  too small. Assessment experts will be consulted about the relationship between number of questions, type of questions, number of students and discriminating power. But the majority of the AB meeting supports the idea of trying to reduce the number of questions in the theoretical part of the IBO.

This is a part of my suggestion

Gecko Gazette" is a newsletter for the 15th International Biology Olympiad. you can download it from the website of 15th IBO.>>>
This is a part of my suggestion for the Advisory Board of IBO, held in Prague Yesterday: ...I would like to emphasize once again upon the number vs. quality of IBO test questions. My suggestion is to decrease the number of multiple-choice type A questions, until their defined quota i.e. 25% of the theoretical task. This will provide enough space to increase the number of type B questions. To improve the quality of IBO, I suggest limiting the number of theoretical part at 50. This will provide enough time to improve the procedures of judging and translating during the sessions...
I'm not sure that how Project-Based Learning can be used in Biology Olympiads. Any way this is enough potential to be used for assessing for understanding. To examine Project-Based Learning in practice, we chose a lower secondary school situated in North East of Tehran during the school year 2001-2 More than 150 students involved in our work were grouped into 50 groups of 2-4 people: each group defined its favorite project, supervised by a mentor. The groups started their activities on the selected project at the beginning of October, while the new school year starts in Iran and students are just come back to school. The duration of time for the project were defined around 4 months, i.e. till end of January. The project underwent diversity in content and requirements. While some demanded collecting information, others required making one or more artifacts, and/or a combination of both. Time dedicated to projects was totally chosen from student’s free time including holydays, when the students were just out of school. Each group was to present its own results as attractive as possible, using different media they were able to apply. Some successful projects were entitled as below.  -         Escalator -         Microwave oven -         Dentistry row materials -         Fridge -         Rope way -         Laser, production and application Some project rose support from students’ family members, so they got favourable helps. This lead to a collaboration needed for science works, i.e. to collect information, visiting required places etc. As some projects involved the students in a real science project, they had a useful practice of science process skills e.g. designing experiments, collecting, presenting, and analysis and interpreting of data. Because all students were involved in the activities enthusiastically mentors were satisfied observing their students in scientific research they were involved. Assessing students project were consider upon assessing for understanding. That was not done by teacher or supervisor, but only considered by visitors. The school continue to introduce projects as extracurricular activities for students after the first year of implementation.