Students who enroll in a new engineering design course under development at West Catholic High School will use cutting-edge technology, thanks to a mini-grant from the Lena L. Allgeier Technology Fund.
Part of the Grand Rapids Foundation for Catholic Secondary Education, the Lena L. Allgeier Technology Fund provides hardware, software, materials, and continuing professional development for Catholic Central and West Catholic students.
This year’s mini-grant invited the high schools’ faculty and staff to apply for up to $1,500 for new and innovative technology supporting students’ learning experiences; one winning proposal was chosen from each high school.
On January 30, 2017, West Catholic technology teacher Angela Critchett and instructional technology specialist Tom Kutzli received the grant award for their winning proposal to jump-start and augment the new engineering design course (planned to start in fall 2017 or spring 2018). By covering topics including prototyping, programmable devices, and virtual reality, the course will further help prepare students for the technology of the future.
The grant will pay for an HTC Vive virtual reality headset, six Raspberry Pi programmable computers, a 3Doodler prototyping pen, Makedo protoyping toolkits, and a subscription to Makezine magazine. The equipment will allow for course preparation and testing, and will make for a state-of-the-art learning opportunity once the course begins.
A winning proposal from Catholic Central has also been chosen, and more details about that project will be available when that mini-grant is awarded.
West Catholic High School serves more than 500 students in 9th through 12th grade. Learn more here.
Raspberry Pi image by Sven.petersen licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Learn more here about Raspberry Pi.
HTC Vive image by Maurizio Pesce licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Learn more here about the HTC Vive.
Image of model plane made with 3Doodler by Fred Hsu licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Learn more here about the 3Doodler.