“Not only do these young ladies have big brains, but they’ve also got big hearts.”
When the Commander in Chief himself sings your praises, that’s when you know you’ve done something great.
So who were the recipients of President Obama’s compliment?
That would be a group of girls from Resaca Middle School (RMS) in Los Fresnos, Texas that have designed an app called Hello Navi to help guide the blind and visually impaired in their surroundings.
Once in operation, Hello Navi will involve the use of a compass, scanner, VoiceOver, optical braille readers and Google navigation to help visually-imparied students traverse the world.
The app was one of eight winners in Verizon’s Innovative App Challenge, earning RMS a $20,000 grant. The bonus prize? Meeting the President during the White House Science Fair on May 27th. Not too shabby for a group of sixth and seventh graders.
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According to a press release, the winning teams (four middle schools, four high schools) were selected from a pool of approximately 1,300 teams across the country that entered the contest.
The young inventors — Jacquelyne Garcia Torres, Caitlin Gonzales, Janessa Leija, Cassandra Baquero, Grecia Cano and Kayleen Gonzalez — were inspired by a friend, Andres Salas, a sixth-grader who is visually impaired.
The girls, with help from Verizon employees and MIT App Inventor Training Corps, will learn to code and focus on developing their app concept into an actual app, the press release states.
Good News Network reports that it will soon be available for all visually impaired students to download — for free.
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Tag: visually impaired
Even After a Half Century of Service, There’s No Stopping This Amazing 84-Year-Old Volunteer
Georgia octogenarian Ellen Hanna recently celebrated an incredible milestone. For a half century, the 84-year-old volunteer has been recording audiobooks for the blind and visually impaired for Learning Ally, a nonprofit that maintains an extensive library of audiobooks for disabled people who cannot read printed books.
As Tech Page One reports, the Alabama native started recording with the organization in 1963, giving up thousands of afternoons to sit in a recording studio to read math textbooks. Reading books for hours on end is no walk in the park, especially before the invention of digital editing software. “Back then, if you made a mistake on tape, you had to guess how far back it was on the tape, rewind and record everything all over again,” Hanna said.
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The retired math teacher has continued volunteering with the organization ever since. “I will stick with Learning Ally till they tell me I can’t do it anymore,” Hanna told the site. “I’ve been blessed with good health, and as long as I can keep that up, I’m not going anywhere.”
If you’re interested in joining Learning Ally, the organization welcomes virtual volunteers from anywhere in the country.