As part of their final senior engineering projects, students at Trinity Christian Academy (TCA) created two tools designed to help three-year-old Micah Kwok, who has hydrocephalus (excess fluid on the brain), in his daily life.
One of the projects is an apparatus to help Micah, who suffers from Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) as a result of hydrocephalus, during his physical therapy sessions. Micah has difficulty focusing on objects when there is too much noise in the background, so one group of students created an apparatus that has interchangeable visuals with high-contrast backgrounds to help Micah during physical therapy.
Another group of students created an eye-level interactive station for Micah, who is bound to a wheelchair. The students were told to design a station that can mount toys and books at eye level for his daily therapy sessions, but it needs to be stable enough that the toys/objects don’t fall on the child.
Lisa Wong, teacher, mechanical engineer and director of technology integration at TCA wanted to give her students a project that has a real-life impact to show them how the field of engineering can help others.