State FBLA goes digital

The final quarter of the 2019/2020 school year saw students learn new ways to use technology. Not only in terms of how to complete their school work, but how to compete in a virtual competition. While Saratoga’s speech and debate team was able to compete in the State Meet through virtual means, they weren’t the only ones to do so.

The State FBLA Conference was also held virtually and three Saratoga students placed extremely well. Saratoga Middle High School (SMHS) students Campbell Graybow and Katelyn Bifano placed 1st in Publication Design as a team while Graybow placed 6th and Bifano placed 10th in the Job Interview Event. Additionally, Rowdy Alameda placed 4th in Computer Applications and 8th in Agribusiness.

Publication Design

“Publication Design, like it implies, is they had to design different types of publications based on the FBLA theme. This year, the theme was to create a design for a new band and set up things for their band,” said FBLA sponsor Jared Mason. “So, these girls had to come up with a name and a logo design for this band. They came up with Moon Kicks.”

Graybow and Bifano also had to design a venue for their band, design posters and banners, create a sales booth and design a shirt with the Moon Kicks logo and tour dates.

“Virtually, of course, they had to present how they went about doing that, what tools that they used in creating their design, their thoughts on color scheme and font choice and who their target audience was,” Mason said.

According to Mason, not only did they design posters and t-shirts, they created them. For the posters, the two girls had posters printed through Perue Printing in Saratoga and, for the shirts, they went through Maria Johnson to create a physical product to present the judges.

“It was really great to see them have the opportunity just to do it virtually,” said Mason.

The two students used the Adobe suite of tools to design their logos and posters with much of their focus on using Adobe Photoshop. For the virtual presentation, however, they had to use Microsoft PowerPoint and had to import those designs into the Microsoft program.

Job Interviews

Like the name implies, this competition centers around a mock interview for a job that the competitors feel they may be qualified for.

“They’re applying to a fictitious corporation that could be anything from a Fortune 500 company to a cattle ranch to an outfitting business to lawn care. They set up their cover letter, resume and paperwork to send in in advance,” Mason said.

Before even reaching the job interview competition, the paperwork submitted by students was judged and only 24 were selected to advance to the virtual competition. Mason said he was very impressed that both Graybow and Bifano were able to not only advance to the interview portion but place in the top 10.

Computer Applications

Mason described Alameda as a “very sharp young man” and this is likely why the freshman student placed 4th in a competition that sees entries from freshmen to seniors from schools across the state.

“You’ve got your Cheyenne schools, your Gillette schools. Buffalo, Torrington, Wheatland have great FBLA programs,” said Mason. “So, to see that he placed 4th, I was pretty darn proud of a freshman that could do that.”

According to Mason, the computer applications competition is similar to the computer applications class he teaches. It involves four Microsoft programs; Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access. The first part of the competition, which Alameda completed before the school year effectively ended, was a two hour timed test using these products to complete as many jobs as possible.

“Anything from having to create documents in Microsoft Word, spreadsheets in with Excel, set up a presentation with PowerPoint and a database with Access. I know all four of those applications are part of the test,” Mason said. “His virtual part, basically he had to go on and take an online objective test dealing with computer terminology and command choices and things about the Microsoft products.”

Agribusiness

Much like it sounds, the Agribusiness competition at the State FBLA Convention focuses on the intersection between agriculture and business. Mason said that there isn’t much he can take credit for on Alameda placing 8th in this competition.

“He’s just a ranch kid that’s involved in agriculture, hard working out on the ranch and loves that side of things, too,” said Mason. “ It’s simply an objective test dealing with agriculture and businesses decisions from an ag standpoint. So, that was straight-on him and knowledge he got from his ag classes and his parents and just hands on.”

Mason stated that he was impressed with all three students and how they were able to adapt to the technology to compete in the state conference. While it may not have been planned, it forced students to work with technology in a new way that may become more instrumental as they move forward in life.