High school Tech Olympics held at Great American Ball Park
CINCINNATI (WKRC) - More than 300 high school students spent the weekend inside various spaces at Great American Ball Park, participating in the INTERalliance of Greater Cincinnati Tech Olympics.
This year marks the 14th year of the technology competition and expo.
"It’s such a chaotic but amazingly coherent mess of it,” said Vinaya Sivakumar, of INTERAlliance.
Competitions include video editing, coding, engineering, speed texting and wiki races among others. The event also connects students with universities such UC, Xavier, Miami and Northern Kentucky.
Local companies Proctor & Gamble, Fifth Third Bank, General Electric and 8451 among others were also on hand.
"It is such a dynamic field in the future we are snowballing towards a second industrial revolution so having students and their ideas at the forefront of that is is what makes programming like this, focusing on bringing more students to the it field it’s so important,” said Sivakumar.
In addition to the individual competitions, students presented yearlong projects in the showcase. This year’s winner was St. Henry High School.
"I’m very surprised and happy for our team,” said Ray Neiheisel.
The team came up with a device to teach braille.
"You always see braille wherever you go. It’s on the signs here signs at school. But not many people can read it,” said Aaron Milner.
The invention is called the B-E-D, A Braille Education Device. It's a small box with pistons and levers inside.
"The pistons would move up and down and it will reflect braille characters so that the user will be able to learn braille,” said William Bartlett.
The team hopes to take the B-E-D to market.
Moving forward, the students will apply for internships with the companies in attendance.
