On June 20, seventeen members of IHS’s Technology Student Association (TSA) traveled to Orlando, Florida to compete at the national conference. This conference—which involved almost 8,000 students from forty-nine states and several countries—was the culmination of months of work for TSA members.
Since the start of the school year, TSA members had been working on various competitive events, including Engineering Design, Video Game Design, Music Production, Children’s Stories, and Fashion Design. At the national conference in Orlando, the students submitted their work to be judged against hundreds of other submissions. Students also competed in many on-site events, including building models of bridges, giving speeches, and filming videos.
IHS’s team took home the third-place trophy in Computer Integrated Manufacturing, an event for which Tilden Chao ’19 and Jacob Silcoff ’17 invented and manufactured a smartphone projector. The device cost less than five dollars to manufacture and was capable of turning almost any room into a low-budget home theater.
IHS also won second place in Music Production for the second straight year. Members Eli Zhang ’18, Matthew Guo ’18, Jenny Yoon ’18, and Francesca Chu ’18 wrote and produced a song called “Vision.” The team used different kinds of software to produce the song, which represented the theme of the conference, “Defining Your Future”.
IHS had five additional top-ten finishes, in the events Structural Design and Engineering, Prepared Presentation, Future Technology Teacher, Technology Bowl Written, and Technology Bowl Oral.
In addition to performing well in their events, TSA members were able to meet many other lovers of technology from different states and countries. During one of the meetings at the conference, they had the opportunity to play games and connect with teams from California, Germany, and Turkey.
The trip was organized by Scott Breigle and Karen Kiechle, the advisors of the IHS TSA team, who made it possible for their students to attend the conference, and throughout the year, had assisted their students in purchasing materials, providing workshop time, and giving them feedback on their events. ICSD and the IthacaSTEM Advocates were also instrumental in making it possible for TSA members to attend the national conference.