The Faculty of Geography reorganized an annual Olympic event called OLGENAS International Geolympiad 2021 for junior high and high school students. This time, the competition raised the theme of “A City for All: Elevating Urban Inclusivity and Liveability for A Sustainable Future” held for five days from 25-29 January 2021.
Alvin Anindita, as the Head Committee for OLGENAS International Geolympiad 2021, said that this year’s OLGENAS is a bit different from earlier years. This condition is affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, which requires some activities online. “Because of the pandemic, OLGENAS this year was held through zoom meetings and sibiti,” she said on Wednesday (3/2).
Alvin added that organizing OLGENAS online was a new experience. Thus, she and the whole committee should prepare everything to support OLGENAS online, including sound devices, lightning, monitors, and increasing the Wi-Fi bandwidth to make stable connections.
“We also created a WhatsApp Group for participants and supervising teachers. Hopefully, these group chats facilitated coordination for the question and answer session,” she added.
During five days of competition, OLGENAS participants conducted activities including Written Test, Multimedia Test and Virtual Observation Learning for all students; Public Lectures and Case Studies for Junior High School students; and Laboratory Test and Planning Proposal Presentation for high school students.
OLGENAS was not only a competition for students, but it also provided special activities for supervising teachers. The supervising teachers’ activities include Teacher Workshop, Virtual Tour of the UGM Faculty of Geography Laboratory, Geo course Public Lecture and Focus Group Discussion.
“We also organized an essay competition for supervising teachers entitled Geosation (Geography Essay Competition). Hopefully, the supervising teachers could get new experiences in writing and could practice in transferring their knowledge and ideas,” said Alvin
The public, in general, could also participate in OLGENAS by visiting the Olgenas Expo. This event was an online exhibition using the Artsteps application. In this exhibition, visitors could see various interesting things regarding the UGM Faculty of Geography, such as lecturer research, the faculty’s history, and association profiles. They could also purchase books with huge discounts.
OLGENAS also organized a webinar called Geotalk. Geotalk was a semi-talkshow webinar that invited three speakers from three diverse backgrounds, namely. Dr. Simone Sandholz who is a researcher from United Nations University, Bonn, Germany (Academician), Alissa Qotrunnada Munawaroh Wahid, an Ambassador of the Indonesian SDGs 2019-2021 (Activist), and H. Joncik Muhammad, a regent of Empat Lawang, South Sumatra (Government).
Even though the event was enlivened with interesting activities, Alvin added that both OLGENAS EXPO and Geotalk were free of charge. Visitors can even get a free e-certificate for the Geotalk event. “Alhamdulillah, visitors were very enthusiastic about the expo and geotalk this year,” she said.
Alvin was also grateful because the visitors and participants were very excited about the sequence events of OLGENAS this year. She hoped that next year, there would be an increase in participants’ enthusiasm so that OLGENAS could give their best either online or offline. “Hopefully, this competition will always be a special and most awaited event for middle and high school students and the general public,” she concluded.
Source: https://www.ugm.ac.id/id/berita/20713-ugm-sukses-gelar-olgenas-international-geolympiad-2021
