Simon Tech Science Fair Projects:
Top of Form
Project Plan
Project plans should be done BEFORE you start your project.

1. What is the purpose of the project?
Students will use 21st century digital tools to demonstrate mastery of content standards that are presented in the Annual Schoolwide SimonTech Science Fair. The project will look at an issue related to student interests and current events, and will deal with how science approaches culturally relevant content. To detail this process, students will create a website that covers the entire lab process, gather data and results, and assess how the trends in their findings can apply to real-world settings.

Example Student Response:For our project, we want to dive more deeply into acids and bases by examining how strong the acid in coca-cola is compared to how strong the acid in orange juice is. We know that coca-cola’s acidic content is high enough to slowly decay the enamel in our teeth, but determining how strong that acid is will help us understand how much soda we should drink if we want to keep our teeth healthy and clean. This should illuminate how seriously sugary drinks affect our overall health and paint a clear picture as to how anyone could determine the strength of any acid in any solution given the right materials and proper guidance. We want to publish our information along with graphs, charts, tables, and videos so that any person in the public could sit down and understand the implications of drinking large amounts of high-fructose corn syrup.
2. Who will use or look at your project?

These projects will be publically visible in the form of a presentation complete with a posterboard detailing the entirety of the lab as well as digitally constructed website that presents a full overview of the experiment with instructional videos provided. Effective collaboration requires students working together as a team to capture difficult scientific inquiries through digital media and publish their content by creating a full-scale website available to the public.

Example Student Response:The ability to put our entire lab online gives us an opportunity to work together for a common goal in a collaborative manner, and then showcase our results for anyone in the world to see. It is easy to make a how-to-guide for experiments that address pressing issues in our population when the internet provides resources for website creation and video publishing. Our main audience will be at the Simon Tech Science Fair, but by publishing our website, anyone across the world would be to able to look at the matter we are attempting to evaluate.
3. GATHER: How will you find the information, hardware, and/or software needed for your project?

Students will utilize iPads and computers to research background knowledge about the lab of their choice. The internet will be the main vehicle for such research, and as such no specific hardware or software is needed. Books and literary articles will available upon request for more specified analysis. The teacher will also be an external source to provide direction, guidance, and facilitate interaction with lab tech.

Example Student Response:Proper research requires students to explore the available information on the internet, locate a number of credible sources, and organize the findings by how relevant the information is. Upon evaluating how much each source lends itself to the narrative of the experiment, we will use our research to plan strategies for lab implementation and data collection. After organizing appropriately, data will be presented in an aesthetically pleasing manner and conclusions will be reached.
4. ORGANIZE: In what ways will you use technology to organize the materials that you will gather? How will this help you in completing the project?

Students will collect and aggregate information from the internet to construct a comprehensive guide on running the lab that they are experimenting on. Students will have the option of using googledocs, evernote, educlipper, videonot.es, deli.cious, and notability to document their work and keep track of their bookmarks

Example Student Response:To collect the proper info and ensure that our procedure deals with the question at hand, we will use our background research to guide our process and determine appropriate solutions to difficult problems. We will record our data on google docs, and display our introduction, preocedure, results, discussion and conclusion via the weebly website created at the beginning of the unit. After re-examining the proper methodology for carrying out the lab, we will tweak our procedure and optimize the process.

5. CONSTRUCT: What software, hardware, and/or online tools will you use to construct your project? If you don’t know, how will you find and decide what you will need?

The digital science fair will be built using free online website creation tools such as wikispaces, weebly, wix, or webs. The construction process will incorporate embedded youtube videos of students completing their lab activity, as well as relevant pictures and other media.

Example Student Response:To make sure that we created a high-quality product, we will archive all of our internet resources using delicious.com and make sure we used responsible citations when taking information from outside sources. After uploading our procedural videos to youtube, we will embed these videos on a weebly website page that we created for free and will use to showcase the entirety of our project.
6. SHARE: What technologies and online resources will you use to share your project with your intended audience?

In terms of basic technologies, students will be using posterboards to display the introduction, discussion, results and conclusion of their labs while keeping the iPads on hand to showcase the actual experimentation process itself via youtube. Students will also have all of these websites available for viewing via the TechYES website and all will be linked through Mr. Astor’s wikispaces page.

Example Student Response:All students have the ability to use their iPads to record whatever process the lab encompasses and also have a physical version of the lab by building posterboards. The iPads are great because it is easy to transport videos and content from the internet to a mobile device so that any point of the lab can be highlighted for curious observers. Weebly will be used to host all information and website design will be the focus for our teamto make our final product look nice.
7. How will you make this project interesting and creative?

Projects cover a range of topics, all related to real-worldissues and scenarios. Examples include: Comparative Analysis of Acid in Soda and Fruit Juice, Will Marble Statues Decay Over Time due to Acid Rain?, Volumetric Study of Vitamin C Concentration in Emergen-C, and The Colligative Properties of Ice Cream Chemistry. By showing the actual chemical processes necessary to conduct such labs via videos and pictures, students will make the science of studying the world come to life in vibrant form. This will be displayed publically online and at the Simon Tech Science Fair.

Example Student Response:Will vary from group to group
8. Will there be a team of students working on this same project with you?
Yes
No
If Yes, then who will be on the team?

ThaHomies!
9. Will you need to collect data and report the results for your project?
Yes
No
If Yes, please explain

OK!
10. Will your project require a model or simulation of a real world system?
Yes
No
If Yes, please explain
11. Will you be using technology communication tools (e.g. forums, blogs, chat, email) to engage with learners from other countries?
Yes
No
If Yes, how will you work with them to learn about other cultures and/or topics of global concern?