Members of the La Quinta High School team are, from left to right: Joseph Issa, Brendan Cooney, Coach Ambrose Lindsay, Hope Salvidar, Nataly Ortega.
The photograph was taken about 5:00 a.m. Thursday morning April 22, 2010, as the team was ready to board the plane at the Palm Springs International Airport. They arrived in Washington D.C. late Thursday afternoon in time to take an evening walk around the lighted national memorials. They visited the Capitol and several museums on Friday and in the evening they participatein a 'get-together' with the other teams. Saturday morning the competition was held at the National Press Club. In the afternoon there they went sight seeing. There was another 'official event' on Saturday evening. On Sunday morning they missed an 'official tour' of the Holocaust Museum because they had to catch their return flight to California.
6TH ANNUAL ACADEMIC WORLDQUEST is an academic competition sponsored by the World Affairs Council of the Desert and Peter Solomon. It is a team game testing competitors' knowledge of world affairs, geography, history, culture, countries, current events, and more.
WHAT MAKES UP A TEAM?
A team consists of 4 high school students. They can be freshman, sophomores, juniors, or seniors. Alternates or substitutes will not be accepted during the competition unless there is an emergency.
DATES AND LOCATION OF THE LOCAL COMPETITION
This year's local Academic WorldQuest competition will be held on December 2, 2010 in the Indian Wells Theatre of the Palm Desert Campus of California State University, San Bernardino. The La Quinta High School team won the 2009 competition. The team then placed 12th in the national competition. Palm Springs High School won the 2007 contest, and the Desert Christian High School team won the 2006 competition.
HOW TO PLAY
 The competition is moderated by a prominent figure in the field of international affairs or journalism. Teams compete by answering rounds of PowerPoint questions. A full competition is 50 questions, with 10 questions per round. Each team has to submit a single answer to each question. The team with the highest number of correct answers wins. Trophies and Peter Solomon prizes are given for the top three teams.
Teacher/Coaches-The coach of the winning team receives a $1,000 stipend along with the free trip to Washington D.C. All coaches receive a $300 stipend for their hard work.
CONTEST QUESTIONS:
There will be 5 rounds. Each round will have 10 questions. Most questions will have four multiple choice answers. Questions will be projected on a screen by PowerPoint and will be read aloud by the Moderator. Teams will have 45 seconds to discuss each question and write down their answer. Answers will be collected at the end of each round.
The questions are tied into the 10 Subject Areas used by the World Affairs Council of America in Washington D.C. where the national competition was held in April 24, 2010, our 5 subject areas were:
1. Round A: Countries. This round will be on general knowledge questions about countries: type of government, location, capitol cities, leaders, history, and current events.
2. Round B: Current Events. This round consisted of questions on world news and world events happening in September, October, November and the first week of December, 2010. To prepare, students read the world news section of major newspapers and news magazines and their web sites.
3. Round C: People in the News. This round focused on world leaders and newsmakers involved in events happening the 3 months before the competition.
4. Round D: Great Decisions. Subjects are selected from the book "Great Decisions, 2010."
5. Round E: Elections. As the U.S. prepared to elect a new president, this category asked questions on how other nations of the world elect their leaders and transitions power between heads of state and government.
NATIONAL WEBSITE AND SAMPLE QUESTIONS
Refer to http://www.worldaffairscouncils.org/programs/worldquest/, the website for the World Affairs Council of America. There is a section of the website devoted to information about Academic WorldQuest and study guides. Questions from previous competitions may be found on this section of the website. We encourage you to look at these questions to get an idea of the format and the level of difficulty of the national competition questions.
For more information, please email : doriswilson01@yahoo.com
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