Engineering Students Design Tech for Blind Teen
Posted on December 17th, 2019 by Mary Lord
India West lost most of her sight to a benign brain tumor when she was about 4 years old. University of Michigan students in David Chesney’s Software Engineering course worked with her to develop technologies that helped her navigate school and home.
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Tags: accessible coding, aming for the Greater Good initiative, assistive technologies, David Chesney, software engineering, University of Michigan engineering students design technology for visually impaired teen
To help teachers and students as young as six explore the rewarding fields of computer science and engineering, eGFI has compiled this list of activities, free online courses, computer animations, and other resources.
Want to get youngsters excited about computers and engineering? The Secret Code Menace, an adventure story for preteens by electrical and computer engineering professor Pamela Cosman, got 4.99 out of 5 stars from eGFI’s fourth-grade reviewer. Your STEM students will love it, too! (The author’s 
Schools around the country have come to view social and emotional well-being as key to learning. They might want to check with Gina Greco, a fourth grade teacher in Auburn, Wash., who worked with local college students to develop a web-based app that asks students how they feel – and flags those who might need intervention. 
This ordinary-looking stretch of road is anything but. Nestled in the mountains of southwest Virginia, the 2.2 mile blacktop contains three bridges, an intersection–and a brain!
In this activity, part of a robotics design curricular unit, teams of students in grades 4 – 8 learn how to program LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT intelligent bricks so that one can remotely control the other, gaining skills and an appreciation for wireless communications as they play “robot soccer.” 
In this activity, students working in pairs learn basic computer programming and software engineering concepts by building an obstacle course, then steering a blindfolded friend through it by using a series of commands. They re-run the maze to improve on their “program.”
