East valley schools: 26th annual DSUSD Science and Engineering Fair 2021
Kari Penny, DSUSD project facilitator
Special to The Desert Sun
With the national pandemic continuing to restrict gatherings, Desert Sands Unified School District Science Fair coordinators took on the challenge of hosting their first virtual science fair. The DSUSD 26th Annual District Science and Engineering Fair award ceremony was held as a Zoom conference meeting on February 3.
Students from across the district created virtual projects including digital journals and display boards. Middle and high school students also submitted short videos that led judges through the boards with details of their processes. Judging of the virtual projects took place on January 22.
The UK government announced this week that it will institute a system of hotel quarantine for some arrivals from abroad, almost a year after several other countries including South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand imposed such policies. The decision, taken to limit the possibility of vaccine-resistant viral strains entering the UK, may herald similar policy shifts from other developed nations that have so far resisted these restrictive, yet effective, border controls. Hotel quarantine is just the latest addition to the list of policy interventions slowly bringing Western countries in line with many in East Asia – from mask wearing to contact tracing apps and even lockdowns themselves – all of which were initially met with scepticism outside of Asia.