The Importance of Science Fairs

Science is about learning and exploring all of the things that happen around us in the natural world.  People ask these questions or explore the things around us because they want to learn more about what is around them.  In order for any scientist, or student, to find that answer is to go through the scientific method and to conduct some form of experiment. The five steps of the scientific method are to make an observation, state the problem, form a question, form a hypothesis, conduct the experiment, analyze the data, and form a conclusion.

From our class science fair articles, one goes on to say that students should be experiencing science in an engaging way through inquiry.  Having the students actively engaged in what they are learning will allow them to have "active construction of ideas and explanations and enhances their opportunities to develop their abilities of doing science." Allowing students to go through the inquiry process, which is the scientific method, then as teachers, we are allowing our students to actually understand what they are learning in science. 

However, like many things, in order to teach something, you actually have to do it yourself.  We had the chance of not only putting together an inquiry lesson for students during fieldwork, but we got to go through the scientific method by actually doing a science fair project.  I have blogged about how much I loved science fairs when I was younger, and I blogged about the project I did for Dr. Smirnova.  

When our students, and even us, engage in a science fair projects, they could be learning about the natural world, they could be learning about technology, and they could be learning about engineering. This all depends on the type of project our students pick to explore.

My project, I feel was an engineering problem since I was aiming to build a system to solve the problem of filtering dirty water to make it into clean drinking water.   My project also pulled in technology since our Science Methods course had a virtual science fair.  It was virtual because we created them using the program Voicethread.  I actually enjoyed using Voicethread.  It is a great program where you can connect your whole class together, and even your class with another class, by creating slides and adding comments to them.  The comments you create and be audio, a video, or text.  On the slides, you can include pictures and add links to bring your viewers to another place.  

Using Voicethread for the science fair project was interesting and I think it would work well using it with the students in your classroom.  Voicethread holds the students accountable and responsible for the work that they do.  It helps to eliminate the parents doing the work for the students, and making sure that they are actually engaged in their project and learning from it. 

Everyone in my Science Methods class created a virtual project using Voicethread, and part of our requirement for the project was to go and comment on each others Voicethread projects.  My Science Methods group and I commented on each others projects and they all did a great job! Allie did her project on whether or not ocean water freezes, Alisha did her project on what sugary drinks do to your teeth, and Rebecca did her project on what liquid keeps apples from browning the fastest. There projects were very interesting and I enjoyed watching them on Voicethread!

From what my members said about my project, they appeared to really enjoy mine as well.  The general idea of the questions that they asked me had to do with the materials that were used in the final water filtration system.  They asked if layering the sand and gravel would make a difference in making clean water, if using bigger rocks would help to make clean water, or if place the sand before the gravel would make the water cleaner. To answer their questions, I said that I did not think of layering the sand and gravel.  This idea could possibly make a difference in the outcome of the water.  Using bigger rocks, I said that I do not think that I could fit bigger rocks in the water bottle since the gravel was larger to begin with. The final question was putting the gravel before the sand, and the reason that I did not do that because I though that since the sand is finer grain there would be less space for the particles to travel.  However, trying the water filtration systems in these ways are all different ways you can try and do it in future experiments!

I really enjoyed doing the science fair project using voicethread.  It was definitely a different experience than doing it in person, and I would love to use voicethread in my future classroom!