‘The Innovation Generation’

LITTLE ROCK — The stereotypical slacker student was not to be found when more than 2,000 students from across the United States presented class projects at the 13th annual Environmental and Spatial Technologies Conference in Hot Springs on March 15.

The three-day program at the Hot Springs Convention Center carried the theme “The Innovation Generation,” highlighting student projects aimed at performing public service using technology and teamwork.

Students from EAST programs in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Iowa, Pennsylvania and California displayed projects that included a sun-powered go-cart; a robot that picks up a clothes-strewn room; student videos on problem-solving and social concerns; and a variety of useful apps and community service projects.

Zac Dalton, 14, an EAST student in the ninth grade at Hot Springs High School, showed his teammates a medallion given to him by one of the members of the EAST Board of Directors that identified the team’s solar-powered vehicle as “a most impressive project.”

“The vehicle was donated to us by the school’s science department,” Dalton said, pointing out the go-cart. “We changed the battery and rewired [the vehicle] to be solar-powered, because there are so many nonrenewable-energy vehicles being used already.

The EAST project team purchased solar cells that were connected in series to create four large solar panels, each with 28 energy-collecting cells.

David Bird, 15, a member of the Hot Springs High School team, said the cells still collect energy from the sun on cloudy days.

“Light is not the energy source,” said Bird, a 10thgrader. “It collected the alpha, beta and gamma rays from the sun. The gamma rays are almost pure energy.”

He said the vehicle will run for hours, once it is fully charged.

“If you go slow enough, with the solar panels attached, you can drive around all day,” Dalton said.

Lakeside High School students showcased several projects the EAST students have completed during the school year. One was a Lakeside High app created by Nils Becker, a German exchange student.

Students can use the app, which provides class schedules, information about the classes and their locations on a map of the school.

Mary Vitro, facilitator for the Lakeside East program, said students also created support materials and participated in community fundraisers.

Students at Cutter Morning Star High School worked on a project with the stormwatermanagement program of the Hot Springs Department of Public Works.

Students placed 800 to 1,000 markers on storm drains to make residents aware that water that goes into the drains will go untreated to the area’s streams and lakes.

For the work, the students in the school EAST program were presented an award from Max Sestili, stormwater manager for Hot Springs.

Krissen Piggee, a senior in the EAST program at Arkadelphia High School, presented a short video dealing with the problem of schoolbullies, but in a way that made viewers laugh as it made its point.

“It was called ‘The Bully Linebacker’ and was about a girl, Lisa Rogers, who dressed in the uniform of an Arkadelphia Badger football player, complete with helmet and pads, and tackled anyone she caught being a bully to others,” Piggee said.

The student said the video was presented at the Student Film Festival in February at the Ritz Theater in Malvern.

“The kids like going there and seeing themselves up on the big movie screen,” Piggee said.

Caleigh Currington, 14, a student in the eighth grade at Mountain Pine High School, told of being a “disaster victim” for a mock disastervictim drill at St. Joseph’s Mercy Medical Center in Hot Springs.

“There were 40 of us, and we were brought into the hospital, some on a bus and some in ambulances,” Curringtonsaid. “I was assigned to be Virginia, a 40-year-old woman with heart problems and lacerations on my legs.”

In character, the student went through the emergency room and was seen by a doctor who assigned some of the patients to rooms that had been set aside for them, she said.

“Afterward, we returned to the emergency-management center at the hospital and learned how they organized to handle a disaster.”

The EAST Initiative organization administers more than 200 EAST programs throughout Arkansas and six other states. Approximately 22,000 students in Arkansas are currently enrolled in EAST programs, and more than 120,000 students have participated since 1995, according to information released at the conference on Thursday.

Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 244-4460 or wbryan@arkansasonline.

com.