Description

CSBowlScorer is a Java program that displays questions to be projected onto a screen, their answers revealed, and the individuals' or teams' scores recorded all in real time. It provides a timer facility, as well as shortcut keys for the major functions.

CSBowlScorer is free for educational and non-profit use.

Download

7/25/07 — Initial public release

Executable Jar File, Java Source code, buzzer sound, example question packet, and XSL stylesheet for printing questions

Question Format

Each game is in a seperate XML file that can have up to four sections. Right now, the program makes an assumption that you'll be playing a game similar to the CSBowl that we run for CS Day here. The four sections are:

1. Buzz-in questions called "toss ups"
2. Team collaborative questions called "all team"
3. A second round of toss up questions
4. Additional questions to be used as a bonus or tiebreaker

If you do not have any questions in a section, it should be skipped.

The included sampleQuestions.xml file should be used as a guide to the XML format. Care needs to be taken to escape special characters like &, <, and >. Wrapping chunks of text to be used verbatim without the need to escape any special characters can be done through the <![CDATA[ construct.

The second line of the sampleQuestions.xml file includes a stylesheet that formats the questions in a print-friendly way if you open it in a webbrowser.

Using the stylesheet in a browser is a good way to make sure your XML validates before the day of the game (although you certainly should run it through the program to check out the format of the questions.) The software validates the entire XML file on load, and will not run any questions if it is found to be malformed.

Program Operation

There are several keyboard shortcuts to allow everything but scoring to be done without the mouse. The shortcuts are as follows:

F1, F2, F3

Start, Stop, and Reset the timer

Up Arrow

Shows the answer

Right Arrow

Advances to the next question, but only after the answer has been revealed

Left Arrow

Goes to the previous question at any time.

Screen Shots

Click to enlarge