My Regional Science Fair Experience Year Three

I feel as if we have reached the end of an era as my middle school son competed in his last and final science fair as a junior competitor.  And in true form he went out with a bang winning the junior computer science category for the third year in a row.  He even collected an email from someone offering him an internship if he needed one.
On Sunday we all piled into the auditorium and awaited the usual awards that come with computer science, an invitation to join the Association for Computing Machinery and maybe a citation from the patent office.  Computer Science isn’t a popular category for engineering or for prizes. 

So as they are going through the names it is clear that the ACM is missing from this year’s event and the kids in CS, are awarded citations from the patent and trade office and two get bags from the Air Force and the sole girl competing gets something from the Society of Women Engineers. 

Now all in all I find this a bit frustrating given the fact that last week we celebrated Ada Lovelace Day and we now celebrate CS Education week and we are changing the look of computer science so that it is appealing to kids.  We are building educational programs like Alice, Storytelling Alice and Scratch to show kids that Computer Science is cool and I start to wonder what incentive do the kids really have…why computer science….?  .  I knew the level of knowledge and skill that went into that project was probably far more than many of these kids but if you don’t know computer science, you don’t get it.
 
And then they start making the announcements for the grand awards.

These awards are the best of the best.  All of the winners are competing against each other for that best project, that best score, that best of the best and then I hear it, a tie for first and a young lady jumps up on to the stage and collects her award for some biological science project, and the second name, my son and his computer science project.  He gets up out of his seat and jumps up on to the stage to collect his medal and I couldn’t be prouder.  With a huge grin he walks across the stage and down the steps to his surprised peers and I think still in a bit of shock himself.

So he did it.  Finally someone noticed his software engineering effort. Mr. Hangey in his closing speech made it clear to watch out for the progressive sciences and technology.  What a way to end junior competition.  On the way home he started talking about coming up with an idea for next year.  So away we go to senior competition next year because he has incentive.