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DACS Helps Judge at Science Horizons

By Jim Scheef


At least seven DACS members participated as judges at the Science Horizons Science Fair held Saturday, March 4th. From my own experience I can say it was fun. In the morning session, I was one of the people judging the “Junior high team biological” section. My team of three judges, each working alone, had seventeen projects to review in about two hours so we had to move along pretty quickly. Visiting each project involved listening to the two junior high students talk about their project, and then asking questions. The goal is not to find or point out their errors but to encourage them to explain aspects of their projects in more detail. The real work they did and the depth of their understanding becomes clear in just a few minutes. After seeing all of the projects, the judging teams meet in a quiet classroom to discuss their findings. Our goal was to pick the top three projects from seventeen. While you might think this would be difficult, we found that we all had the same top five in mind when we sat down. After some discussion, we had out top three. These projects then go on to the “finals” in the afternoon.

I found the afternoon judging to be more difficult because we were now looking at the cream of the crop. My category now was “Senior physical” and we had four judges to see fourteen projects. I think I was the last judge to leave the floor. These were senior high students and we found that they really learn quickly. As each judge visited a project and asked questions, the kids would incorporate these questions into the talk they give to explain their project. When we discussed the projects later, we found that the last judges heard a vastly different explanation than the first. In the finals, we had to rank our top four choices which was much more difficult that just picking the top three. To start we each gave our “top picks” and there was not as much commonality as you might hope. This meant that each judge had to defend his or her choices and convince the others of the merits of a particular project. Charlie Bovaird was on this judging team with me so you can ask him about our discussions. In the end we all felt good about our choices.

Overall, this was a fun and rewarding experience. You had to be on your toes to keep up with these kids but on the other hand it was easy to see who doing real science and who copied it off the Internet. Next year DACS will be more involved and I urge you not to miss this opportunity.


From right to left: Ed Shaw, Birgitte Elbek, Jim Scheef, Fiona Nickolson, John McDougal, Charlie Bovaird, and unidentified. The last person disappeared before I could get his name.


Jim Scheef is outgoing president of DACS.


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