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Scheck Hillel Students Win Grand Prize in STEM Contest
Congratulations to Tamara Berner, Gabriella Faith and Lyla Faith (all Grade 8), the Design/STEM students who won the $1,000 Grand Prize of the North American ADI Make the Change Challenge: a competition for students to design solutions that can improve quality of life for people with physical disabilities. Their Shaquille O'Wheel project is designed to help wheelchair basketball players easily adjust the hoop's height. Installed on the basketball hoop pole, it can be operated at wheelchair height.
Among 181 entries from throughout the United States and Canada, this winning team designed the innovation within Scheck Hillel's tikkun olam (repair the world) Design/STEM unit of study. Mazal tov to these students, the student-engineers of all of Scheck Hillel's 16 proposals, and the school's Design/STEM Department Chair and alumna Elana Lazar '98.
In making the announcement, ADI remarked, “The inventive group of 8th grade students from Scheck Hillel Community School in Miami, Florida, prevailed with an entry entitled ‘Shaquille O’ Wheel,’ a reimagined basketball hoop that makes it easier for wheelchair basketball players and others to adjust the height of a basketball hoop by simply turning a wheel. While most hoops are raised and lowered using systems that require a significant amount of upper body strength or the capacity to reach levers and hydraulics at heights well over five feet, their contest entry envisions a coil within the pole that is controlled by an easy-to-use wheel at sitting height, empowering people of all abilities to be self-sufficient on the court.”
Click here to visit the ADI website.
