Jump to content

Menu

Trifold vs poster for science fair


Recommended Posts

My DS are participating in the city/regional science fair again this year and we have noticed a trend towards using posters rather than trifold boards. It is a middle school/high school science fair. They are trying to decide whether to make trifold boards this year, or whether to make posters. A few questions have arisen if they use posters:

 

1. Where is the best place to get the posters printed?

 

2. What is the best way to mount and display the posters?

At the science fair last year and at the graduate symposium that I attended this spring, it appeared to be difficult to display them well. It is difficult to mount them on trifold boards and difficult to get anything else to stand up on a table. Easels are tricky for the judges and attendees to maneuver around.

 

3. What is the best (easy!) software to use to create the poster?

Photoshop? One DS is a photographer and is experienced with Photoshop.

 

As a side note, Ruth in NZ's science fair posts have been extremely helpful in choosing and pursuing the science fair projects. It has been a lot of work (and fun), so now the next big step is displaying and presenting the work well!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is it indoors or outdoors?

 

For indoors,

- prop against the room walls if your booth happen to be at the room circumference

- double side taped onto rolling white boards (which was supplied by the hotel where hubby's conferences were hosted)

- tape the poster to dense styrofoam and I had used bricks and long dowel to prop

- if you have a tabletop easel or can borrow one, those would work too. I'm assuming your difficulty is with standing easels.

 

Anything works to create a poster but I prefer a well printed one so we splurge on Fedex Kinkos/Staples/OfficeMax if we need it marketing quality.

 

For outdoors I have no idea since all the marketing events I had to do were indoors because of wind gust. Hubby's conferences are always at hotel ballrooms.

Edited by Arcadia
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

When DD wanted to do a poster session for a herpetology conference, I found that it would cost about $50 to print her poster in color in the expected dimensions. Yikes! (She applied for, and did, a talk-she only needed a PowerPoint on a USB drive for that).

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The science fair is indoors at the university here.  I hadn't thought of a rolling white board -- I wish that we had a couple of those in our office, and then we could bring those to the fair.  I looked at the table top easels online and there are a few inexpensive ones that might work well -- more like a display easel than an art or writing easel.

 

Yes, the $50 is quite pricey for printing, so they may end up doing the trifold boards this year.  There is an option to sign up for a PowerPoint presentation instead but the registration deadline has passed for this year.  Both DS like that idea for next year -- the PowerPoint would be easier to set up and cheaper. I had (mistakenly) thought that they prefer the trifold/poster option since they don't have to present to a group, but they said that they don't mind. There is no predicting teenagers I guess :)

 

Thank you for the ideas!  I really appreciate the WTM boards!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

DH's mentor commented that talks are often easier in some ways than poster sessions. During a poster session, you have people walking around and asking questions that you're really not prepared for-and often ones that would be answered if they actually read the poster. During a talk, you have control for the first 12 minutes or so, and usually only have a few questions to answer, because you've probably answered the main ones already. 

 

I hadn't thought of it that way, but thinking back on the big conferences, I think he's right. The poster sessions often are so chaotic that DD prefers to go look at the posters outside the regular session, and that's when she's NOT presenting a poster!

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...