She blinded me with... SCIENCE!

I judged a Science Fair today*. I learned some cool stuff, like the Stroop Effect and that hamsters have a really good sense of smell. I was disappointed though, some of the kids I judged didn't do nearly enough research to have a good (or correct) project. I'm not sure how much of that was laziness and how much was that they didn't get enough help/mentoring.

I've actually never been to a science fair... We had something called "Discovery Day" I think, where the kids in the gifted program had projects out with their research, but we didn't have to do experiments, although some people did. You were required to pick a topic and some questions to answer. Then you researched those questions and did a couple of projects, like build dioramas, make posters, or disassemble something. So it was fairly similar except you didn't have a hypothesis.

But what I really took away from this was that when I have kids we're going to have to work hard to make sure they understand how to do research (and to not cite Wikipedia!) since I guess that's not really part of the curriculum anymore...


Cheers!
Red



*Okay, you caught me... I really only put up this blog so I could share this video. Duurr hurrhurr ...

Also, ever seen Devo's "Whip It"? Seriously, wtf...