Photo by Alexis A. Goring. Science fair judge Diana Khachadourian interviews Robert Goddard French Immersion School student Lucas Azaryus about his project.

Published on: Thursday, January 26, 2012

By Alexis A. Goring

Robert Goddard French Immersion School has coordinated and executed a STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) Fair for more than a decade at their school. This year, however, was different — the school decided to “go green” with an “e-Science fair” using computers rather than boards to create and display projects.

“I think it came about at the end of last year that they decided that we would stop doing the big board science fair. We’re also a green school, so it works right in line with what we’re trying to do,” said Martha Kristy, who works as the Instructional Program Coordinator for the school.

Peter Mills, a science teacher, was in charge of the details of the entire process, from creating a backstage platform on which the teachers could manage all the projects, to showing the students how to use Google Docs and explaining to the students how to set up their project online and make corrections to the edits on their work performed by the teachers. Mills was also in charge of recruiting the volunteer judges.

“We did an electronic registration through Google Docs, and then after that we had to create a website where we can actually upload all the electronic projects in power point format onto the website and create projects so judges can easily see the projects online when they log in,” Mills said. “Some (students) did snapshots, some of them just did regular Microsoft or Power Point by designing their own pages like they would put on the board, just in electronic format so the process hasn’t changed. What has changed is the modality of judging the project at the end.”

Due to their developmental stage, students in third through fifth grade did not “go green”— they still used their science fair log book in which they wrote their question and their prediction, materials, procedure, result and conclusion and brought it to school every day for teachers to check.

The entire judging process was done online. The judges were divided into two groups — one group consisting of about 30 people used the newest computer lab with the brand new computers and the other group consisting of about eight judges did their work in a smaller, less modern computer lab with older versions of computers.

Diana Khachadourian, employee of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center received an e-mail from the school inviting her to be a judge. She seized the opportunity with confidence as she is fluent in French and loves to help people.

When it came to determining the winners, Khachadourian said, “I think I’m looking for them caring about what they do, that they actually have an interest, that it sparked something in them.” 

“Each judge will call a child. When they come in and log onto the site, they go and click on their name and they will be able to see everything the child did so the judge can ask them questions,” Assistant Principal Nasser Abi said.

Each judge stayed at the same computer where they scored student work and interviewed students, all day. Students were escorted to the computer labs to be interviewed by the judges about their project, by their fellow student guide, pre-selected by each classroom teacher.

At least 160 students, from sixth to eighth grade, participated in the e-Science fair.

Dean Mills, a student and the son of Peter Mills, made boats of aluminum paper and a kit. When asked what he found out through the experiment, he said, “Well, I did three boats — one small, one medium and one big — the biggest boat held the most pennies. I think it held at most like 194 pennies.”

The e-STEM brought benefits for both students and teachers, Kristy said.

“I think the most rewarding part is seeing the kids mastering the technology,” she said, speaking on behalf of the teachers. “To see them be able to insert the pictures into the power point presentations and add all of the French accents and manipulate all of that is really rewarding because they’re finding an everyday use for technology.”