FARMINGTON — Seven Cascade Brook School students were recognized in a ceremony at the school on Thursday, April 25, for their participation in ExploraVision, a science competition that challenges kids to come up with viable solutions to real world problems.

Sponsored by Toshiba and the National Science Teaching Association [NSTA], over 2,000 teams participated in the nationwide competition with two teams from Cascade Brook School receiving an honorable mention and a regional victory.

Designed for students K-12, ExploraVision engages students to tackle problem solving in the real-world using STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics]. “ExploraVision challenges students to envision and communicate new technology 10 or more years in the future through collaborative brainstorming and research of current science and technology,” the organization’s website states.

Of the 2,000 teams that were entered in the competition, CBS fifth graders Emily Roy, Brennan Tibbetts, and Maple Corey got an honorable mention for their project titled ‘H.E.L.P’, while Clara Ernst, Wiley Billings, Emma Hafenecker, and Abigail Ragsdale placed in the top 24 teams of the competition and the regional winners with their project titled ‘M.E.R.’, which stands for Medical Earth Robot.

The four students, along with their GATE Program Teacher and Coordinator Sandra Jamison, also received brand new Chromebook laptops from Toshiba, which were presented by Toshiba Representative Tim Strange.

“On behalf of Toshiba and the National Science Teachers Association,” Strange said, “I would like to extend our sincerest congratulations to these two teams from Cascade Brook School on the projects they entered in the 2024 ExploraVision competition.”

Students were drafted by Jamison, who then guided the students into the development of their projects. Jamison has been with the GATE [Gifted and Talented Education] program for six years and the two teams at CBS represent her first honorable mention and a regional victory.

“The kids are so engaged and so interested in what they’re doing,” Jamison shared, “and it’s just exciting to watch them go from a simple idea and then run with it.”

H.E.L.P, which stands for ‘Helping Everyone Live Perfectly’, is an earpiece that a user would wear and receive active medical data and relay that information to them. The group’s project earned them an honorable mention for placing in the top ten percent of the 2,000 teams that entered nationally. The three students each received a certificate commemorating their honorable mention.

“We have 2,000 teams competing this year across the country,” Strange shared with the audience. “So, being in that top 10% is quite an accomplishment.”

For the M.E.R. team, Billings took to the microphone to describe the idea, which is a robot that administers attention to wounded soldiers on the battlefield. Billings shared with an audience of his fellow students and parents the team had initially decided against a drone and instead favored a robot that could submerge itself and travel through the dirt using a drill.

Once the M.E.R. reaches its target, it creates a protective shield around the wounded soldier and uses smaller robots to administer medical attention.

“[The robots] are trained in emergency medical care and they stabilize the patient,” Billings shared, “and then they send out a signal of the location of the injured soldier to the nearest medical personnel and then moves to the next patient.”

Billings yielded questions from the audience, with students asking how the M.E.R. is powered, to which Billings responded by stating the proposed M.E.R would be solar powered and have a large battery to account for time underground.

With the regional victory in hand, Billings and the rest of the team will learn on Monday, May 6, who the national winners of the competition are through ExploraVision’s website. If the team is named a winner, it will get a chance to visit Washington D.C. and receive a scholarship.

“In thinking about why I have students participate in ExploraVision,” Jamison shared with The Franklin Journal, “one of the biggest reasons is this: I truly believe as they have to think of real world problems and come up with a way to solve them, it inspires them and they realize they can make a difference and they have the ability to change the world for the better.

“It plants a seed,” she added.

For more information on the competition, please visit www.exploravision.org.

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