Larry Oberg

The new 2009 VSF Blog is located at http://odec.ca/wordpress/

Planning for the 2009 VSF is now underway. Please forward any suggestions on ways to improve the VSF to larry@virtualsciencefair.com or post here.

You may have noticed that the sponsor indicated on your certificate was different than the one listed on the website display of awards. This was due to a delay in receiving some sponsor’s decisions before the certificates were printed.

I have added a Doha page to provide a bit more information on my trip to Doha, Qatar.

The final results of the 2008 VSF have been posted. There may be a few changes yet since Transport Canada has not finalized their decisions on their awards. Judging was particularly difficult this year. Keep in mind that the margin of error is likely, plus or minus one level.

If you notice any glaring errors, or obvious mistakes, please let me know asap.

larry@virtualsciencefair.com

Review the Comments Page

Another year we will have to encourage more use of image editing software to reduce image file size. Many projects include images  more than 10X the file size necessary. This results in slow downloads and waste of costly bandwidth. Use image editing software to reduce physical dimensions (and file size) rather than web page software which only reduces the physical dimensions but does not reduce the file size. See example here.

Final results of the 2008 VSF will be posted on June 16. (There may be a few awards added later since I may not have the decisions of one of the sponsors of special awards at that time.)

If your project is missing from the final display of projects and awards (coming within a few days) check the project using your userid in the project tester on the top left side of www.virtualsciencefair.com  Projects with significant parts missing may have been eliminated from judging and further display. They remain on the server.

If your project looks good it may have been omitted by accident. Please contact Larry of more information. larry@virtualsciencefair.com

Timeline ( http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/ ) is a neat addition to a web site but unfortunately it seems to require a live external link to the script on the  MIT server.  Live external links are not allowed.

One project studied the properties of magnetized water. Never having heard of magnetized water I was prompted to investigate since I didn’t think water could be magnetized. A couple of Canadian websites that appear reputable may be informative with respect to magnetic water and other magnetic health devices.

http://www.chem1.com/CQ/magwatscams.html

http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/health/magnets/index.html

Many projects have the buttons in the navigation bar out of order. There may be some debate as to the names and number of steps in an experimental report, but clearly Conclusions should not precede Observations. Typically the steps will include the following in order Background Research, Problem, Hypothesis, Procedure, Variables, Observations/Results/Data, Discussion, Conclusion, References.

The navigation bar menu should be in the same order. Build the menu once and copy it to the top of each page.

The source of all images used should be provided. One way to do this is shown at http://www.odec.ca/CreatingProjects/intro/citations.htm

Even if the image is created by the student, it should be credited to show that the student created the image.

I have noticed that many projects have live links to external websites. This is not allowed. Projects with live external links will rank lower than they would had they not had those links.

The reason for this rule is that we have no control of the future content of external sites. In the future the link may link to some content entirely different from what it does when the project was created. This is also why embedded images and video from other servers (example You Tube) are not allowed.

It is not possible to accurately predict when judging will be complete. I am slowly reviewing all the projects and doing the initial ranking. As well, I am waiting for several teachers to forward their rankings and comments. As you may recall, all teachers with more than one project are asked to rank the projects and provide comments.

I was honoured to participate as a judge in the first ever World Virtual Science and Engineering Fair held in Doha. It was a spectacular event held at the College of the North Atlantic in Doha. The organizer of the event was Wilf Riego a former VSF judge. A former and current VSF participant Vlad Ternosky won the high school category with his project A Hole in a Wing.

He was awarded a $20,000 scholarship towards his university education.

Another team from the 2007 VSF participated in the post secondary category. Robert Young and Jordan Chin won honourable mention for their 2007 VSF project Finding F(x) with Genetic Algorithms.

All participants and guests were treated royally by our Qatar hosts. The event and related activities provided wonderful lifelong memories for all involved.

I will provide more information on this amazing event in a later blog entry. If the event is repeated next year, I encourage VSF participants to enter this event as well.

I have arrived back from Doha and England. The final judging of the 2008 VSF projects will now begin. Updates on judging progress will be posted in this blog. Again I apolgize for the delay in judging the 2008 VSF. 

I am leaving today for Qatar and England, returning May 27. I may not be able to answer emails during parts of the trip. I hope to have some judging done during the trip.

I will soon have a system in place for teachers to add comments and rankings for projects created by their students.

More information on this should be available before Tuesday May 6.

Judging the VSF projects usually takes several weeks. This year an additional factor is that I must be out of the country from May 7 to May 27.  Results will likely not be available before the first week of June.

I will update progress in this blog. The first step is to review all the projects eliminating any that do not display an index page. Currently, I am working on this step.

You may view the all the projects by entering the Team Zone and selecting "View All Projects".

The due date for 2008 VSF projects is extended 48 hours from 11:30 PM ET April 30 to 11:30 PM ET May 2.

After 11:30 PM ET May 2 the accounts will be locked and no further changes will be possible.

I will be away from my computer and not able to respond to emails on Friday April 25 and Saturday April 26. I will try to respond to all questions on Sunday April 27.

Use the project display checker on the VSF Home Page www.virtualsciencefair.com  top left corner. Your project must display using this system in order for it to be judged. It is best to check your project on a different computer and network than the one used to build the project.

If you have any problems contact larry@virtualsciencefair.com

Please include your userid and password with any request for help.