Feb

24

Science Fair Projects (Past, Present, Future)

February 24, 2009 |  Tagged , | 2 Comments

Every month I conduct a meeting and training with our Academic Coaches and Instructional Facilitators. We discuss different ideas about how to use technology in the classroom or I answer any questions they may have that is technology related for about the first 30 minutes. After that I usually conduct a technology training for those in attendance. Last week we worked on creating a short digital story about a recent district Science Fair to use as a promotional video for the next year.

While I showed them how to use Microsoft PhotoStory 3 to create their digital stories, I noticed something about the pictures that were taken at the science fair. In the pictures, students were still presenting science fair projects with the old cardboard, paper, photos and handwritten items. Although most of them looked very neat and well done, I was a little disappointed that there was very little technology at the science fair (robotics was about the only technology I saw). It really got me thinking about how much things havent changed in the schools and wondered if this was the norm across the board.

  • Did other school districts use technology in their science fairs?
  • Were we the only district where technology is still lacking greatly in the classroom?

As I was reading some tweets on Twitter, I came across a tweet by Tim Holt, Director Instructional Services, El Paso ISD, which lead me to his following podcast.

After blogging about this topic for several years in a row, I figured maybe if I did a short video with Karl Fisch-like pictures and ominous music in the background, people may pay attention a little more. So here is my video: A Vision of Science Fair Projects Today.

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Apparently, I am not the only one questioning this lack of technology in science fair projects.

After watching the video, ask yourself “Where do you teach?”


Comments

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2 Comments so far

  1.    Tim Holt on February 24, 2009 10:35 pm

    Paul,
    Thanks for keeping the conversation going.
    We actually had a cyber-science-fair in El Paso mixed into the “regular” fair and had over 70 kids go the digital route. What we noticed was that the kids in the cyber-fair spent much more time with the judges and went into much more depth with their explanations.

    Tim
    El Paso

    [Reply]

  2.    Michael on February 25, 2009 11:28 am

    I thin you’re right we do need to improve and please visit our sites
    gwagrade5.edublogs.org
    wild-monkey.webs.com
    freewebs.com/monkey429

    [Reply]

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