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RESTON, VA, January 19, 2024 – Students from a wide variety of schools discovered today that their REACH Challenge projects, which changed the lives of people with different abilities in their communities, have earned awards through the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association (ITEEA).
ITEEA's REACH Challenge is an impactful Adaptive & Assistive Technology (AT) design-thinking project for middle school, high school, and college level STEM programs. Teachers are provided with lesson plans and activities on Empathy, User-Centered Design, Prototyping and more, to lead their students in using their STEM skills to REACH a member of their community who has a challenge to overcome. This innovative project shows students that they can use their STEM skills for social good, making a real-world difference in the lives of those around them.
This year’s award winners hail from ten states: California, Iowa, New Jersey, Illinois, New York, Hawaii, Florida, Kansas, Delaware and Missouri. The students and teachers have described their experience as “heart-warming,” “profound,” and “invaluable.”
“This project really is life changing, not only for the person receiving the adaptive technology, but for the students and their teachers as well,” said Gavin Wood, an award-winning STEM educator who partnered with ITEEA to develop REACH Challenge. “It’s a win-win for everyone involved.”
In this fifth year for ITEEA's REACH Challenge, teams created a wide variety of AT solutions, including a customized toothbrush for a teen born with a cleft palate, and devices to help those with Cerebral Palsy and those who had suffered a stroke, in order to help them gain more independence.
"REACH Challenge is an amazing experience for students, teaching empathy, engineering, and user-based design. Better yet, to supplement the Challenge itself, ITEEA provides lead teachers with relevant STEM lesson plans aligned to ITEEA's Standards for Technological Literacy and Engineering Literacy (STEL). These National Science Foundation (NSF)-backed standards support the teachers as they equip students to meet the necessary standards and practices for technological and engineering literacy," said Kelly Dooley, ITEEA Executive Director. “We couldn’t be more excited to honor these teams for their accomplishments at ITEEA’s upcoming Conference!”
The award-winning teams receive STEM grants, a special banner to display at their schools, and supplies to support their STEM program. REACH Challenge Team leads are also invited to receive their award at ITEEA's 86th Annual Conference, to be held March 6-9, 2024 in Memphis, Tennessee.
Special thanks to the ITEEA Foundation, including the many individual donors who have made contributions, and Harbor Freight for support of the 2023 REACH Challenge. For 2024, ITEEA is looking for additional sponsors to increase awareness of REACH Challenge, and to provide more opportunities for teams to earn awards for their STEM programs. For more information, contact ITEEA at reach@iteea.org.
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