Last year – Steve and Judy's Travels!

Conner and his friend Ari did a science fair project. They were 9. They built and tested a “Death Ray” made by concentrating sun rays with four different magnifying glasses. They took first place. They went on to regionals and got honorable mention. This year, now they’re 10. They entered again. This is Becky’s report. They did a project designed to help children with special needs. They hooked up a 3D scanner to a computer, and with some help from Brian, set it up to look for arm movements. They made a video of falling balloons, and set it to music they made using a program called "Garage Band". They then took Ari’s brother, who has a genetic disorder that includes severe developmental delays, and taught him (over the course of 3 different days) to use the program. When Paul would move his left arm, it would turn the movie on. When he moved his right arm (or after 10 seconds of no movement), the video turns off. They tracked the number of times he triggered the video on and off, at two different sensitivities (as in how far Paul had to move his arm to trigger the video), to see if he got better at using it over time. The hope is that a program like that could help children with special needs learn cause and effect, and encourage them to move in a more deliberate and purposeful way.

They came up with the idea, and did all of the parts except programing the framework (they did do part of the programming, told the program what movements to look for, set the sensitivity of the program, made the video, set it to music, and added that to the program). Their board is cool, and their presentation to the judges was awesome. The first judge to see them told them "they set the bar so high he couldn’t see how any other project could possibly compare". They also ended up presenting for more judges than the other kids, because some judges who weren’t assigned to them wanted to come see it.

The really cool part – on the third day of testing, Paul "got it". You could see him thinking, moving his arm, smiling when the video turned on, looking mad when it turned off, and then turning it back on again. His mom and I were both tearing up at that! That’s a big deal for him! Conner and Ari have also gotten requests from a couple of people who work with kids with disabilities who would like to try using the program with their own students. Conner and Ari both think it’s a great idea, and Brian is going to try to get the program to a more usable state so that it can be shared. Brian and I (and Ari’s folks) are all so proud we can’t even stand it! You can add grandparents to that list of proud.

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