October 1, 2020

Dear Students and Families,

Like Science? Science Fair is the project for you and has transformed statewide to a Digital format for this school year. Student projects will be presented as digital portfolios. 

Participation in the Kauai District Science Fair provides lots of fun learning and prizes to be awarded in the Middle School Category; all we need to do is enter  projects digitally.   Below is a short summary to get us started with additional supports attached.  This might be a good activity over Fall Break for our WCMS Middle School Learners to start developing ideas for their projects.  

• The Fair is all Virtual and hosted by Hawaii Academy of Science; see the Science Fair topic when you are on the home page.          (https://www.hawaiiacademyofscience.org/).   

• Learners can initiate their portfolio on the “Student Corner” part of the Hawaii Academy of Sciences web page  (https://studentcorner.io/hssef#scrollto) .   Thus, even if a teacher does not want to take time on the Science Fair projects in class; a student themselves can work on a project and automatically participate with the District Science Fair of Kauai and perhaps the State Level Fair.  Step by step support is there on the web site once a student registers their name and project idea.  Step by step support is also available in the weekly course (see support #1).  

• On island, we have a weekly virtual “How-to-do Science Fair class” . Flyer with details will be available shortly… class begins next week, Wednesday, September 23 from 7-8 pm.  Course is sponsored by our island coordinator.  

• Research from home ideas are linked here:  https://www.societyforscience.org/research-at-home/

District Science Fair will happen starting on February 20.  Use fall break to establish a student project account and initiate research into project possibilities.  More information will be provided as it becomes available. 

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Additional Support #1-  Mr. Dan Matthews is our  Island Science Fair Coordinator on Kauai  (dan@dmatt.com) .  He is very passionate, has an extensive science background and just retired from teaching grade 9 science at Kauai High.  We can easily contact him for questions and assistance. He is running this weekly class and will “walk a participant” through all the steps to build a project.  

Additional Support #2- Equipment and mentors.  Mr. Matthews is working on grant funding for equipment and getting an advisory board organized to help with the mentoring aspect of the projects.  This is on-going as Mr. Matthews has just taken over as coordinator.

Additional Support #3-   Resources for doing a project at home, ideas, examples, categories to consider are also linked on Hawaii Academy of Science “Science Fair” pages:   

https://www.societyforscience.org/research-at-home/

Additional Support #4 - The “Society for Science and the Public” has more Science Competition support links.  For Middle School Students, once entered in a Science Fair, they are automatically entered in “Broadcom-masters”.  Prizes, further events to attend etc.  

https://www.societyforscience.org/

https://www.societyforscience.org/broadcom-masters/