April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
ST. JOSEPH'S, BROADALBIN
Young inventors' work could help autistic students write
Writing your own name sounds simple -- unless you have disabilities that make it a struggle. Madison, a fifth-grader, is a member of a FIRST Lego League team at Broadalbin-Perth Central School that's trying to solve that problem.
Her seven-member, all-girl team, the FLL Amigos, may even patent their invention to help students with autism at the Wildwood School in Schenectady learn to write using a tracing template and a marking pen with a sensor. "Our parents have been having meetings and we've been talking about" applying for a patent, Madison told The Evangelist.
The FIRST ("For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology") Lego League is a nationwide competition promoting science-related projects and teamwork. Broadalbin-Perth is just one school in the area with Lego League teams; The Evangelist profiled a similar team at St. Mary's School in Ballston Spa several years ago. (Read the story at www.evangelist.org.)
Madison said that, although she believes the league is intended for older students, her art teacher "thought it would be a good idea for us" and brought it to her school. Besides the FLL Amigos, Broadalbin-Perth has several other teams: Fully Charged, the Piece Makers, the Programming Patriots, the Rockin' Robots and the Nut Jobs. Madison joined the Lego League, she said, simply because "I like Legos." But she got caught up in the excitement of working on the writing invention.
"We [made] a template of the letter 'S.' We put sandpaper in it, because 'sandpaper' starts with 'S,'" Madison explained.
To help students with disabilities use the template, she said, the girls made a "squishy ridge" around its edge to keep the students' tracing inside the lines. Madison said the team is still working on a special pen with a sensor to go with the template.
As they worked on the project, the FLL Amigos visited the Wildwood School and talked with a teacher there. That helped, Madison said, because the only person she knows with autism from her own school doesn't have an issue with writing.
The FLL Amigos won the project award for their idea at a January regional competition and are submitting the invention to win the FIRST Lego League's global innovation award. If they win, they could get help in developing their template.
Meanwhile, Madison is busy with other projects, too: She's in her school's newspaper and yearbook clubs, sings with the Mohawk Valley Chorus and teaches faith formation with her grandmother at her parish, St. Joseph's in Broadalbin.
Madison likes to explain to the First Communion class what receiving the sacraments will be like. She's got experience: Not having been baptized as an infant, "I had to get baptized before I did it [made First Reconciliation and First Communion], so it all happened in one pile."[[In-content Ad]]
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