oakcrest school

Oakcrest Sophomores Explore the Future of Technology

By Gretchen R. Crowe
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of 3/22/07)

Three Oakcrest School sophomores used “initiative, perseverance and teamwork,” along with a combination of imagination and science, to create the Emergency Heart Attack Notification Treatment System (EHANT) as part of Toshiba and the National Science Teachers Association’s ExploraVision challenge.
As a result, Danielle Douez, Kelly Johnston and Veronika Stare were named regional winners of the contest and will compete in the finals against five other regional winners in grades 10-12 from around the country.
In an assembly last week, Ellen Cavanagh, head of the McLean school, congratulated the three girls.
“The path had detours, the path had uphill climbs, it was a path they could have easily chosen not to take,” she said. “And yet each of them chose to take the path, to stay with it and to finish it well.”
The EHANT system was selected as the top project from all schools in the mid-Atlantic. Other regional winners at the same grade level hailed from New York, South Carolina, Ohio, Louisiana and California. For the next phase of the competition, the Oakcrest team must create a Web site for and prototype of the EHANT System, and the results of the national finals will be announced at the end of April. First- and second-place teams from each grade level will receive a $10,000 or $5,000 savings bonds, as well as a free trip to the awards ceremony in June in Washington.
Inspired by family members with heart-related problems, the girls designed the EHANT system specifically for those likely to suffer a heart attack. Using a combination of current and futuristic technology, the EHANT system would detect a heart attack, administer medicine into the bloodstream and report the medical emergency by calling 911.
“This project helped us work better as a team,” Johnston said, reading from a prepared presentation. “We were all able to express our own ideas and add to the invention. We explored different technologies and sciences that helped us make this project. We believe it is a useful idea and hope that such a device will be built in the future.”
The EHANT system was the team’s second stab at the project; after two months of research, Douez, Johnston and Stare discovered that a piece of technology similar to what they were working on already existed. Instead of giving up, the team switched focus and came up with the EHANT System in less than a month.
“What really kept us going is that we didn’t want to let each other down,” Stare said. “We had already done a lot of work and we knew that just stopping and quitting where we were wasn’t going to be enough for us — it wasn’t going to be sufficient. We wanted to please ourselves … to finish the competition completely.”
Amid congratulations to the three girls, Cavanagh also recognized science teacher and mentor Dr. Arundhati Jayarao, former physicist and five-year teacher at Oakcrest.
“She supported them and she guided them and she encouraged them in their efforts, and here they are today,” said Cavanagh. Turning to Jayarao, she added, thank you “for instilling in all of your students … not only a love for learning and exploring in science, but the courage to take risks and see the challenge through to the end.”
Jayarao said that in her years of promoting the ExploraVision program, Douez, Johnston and Stare were the first to “take the bait.
“ExploraVision is all about imagination. It is all about thinking outside the box,” Jayarao said. “Our Oakcrest students have proved themselves to be true Oakcrest students.”
Representatives Sarah Kish and Tetsuo Kadoya from Toshiba and Marie Wiggins from the NSTA also were on hand to recognize the winners.
“We want you to know for certain how proud we are of your accomplishments,” said Kish.
As a tangible recognition of these accomplishments, each girl received a Toshiba portable DVD player, and the team as a whole received a plaque, banner, framed award certificate and a laptop computer, on which they will complete the next phase of the competition.
Waiting at the front of the school to go home after the assembly, eighth-graders Chelsea Welsh, Katie Jeanneret and Lourdes Bobbio said that the sophomore girls had inspired them to try the ExploraVision program — and that kind of inspiration is just what Jayarao is trying to promote.
“It’s my passion to encourage girls to go into science,” Jayarao said. “I do not think that it should be just classroom teaching. … They should do something that interests them.”
Standing on the stage, holding her award, Johnston agreed.
“I have to say I didn’t know science could be so fun,” she said.

Gretchen R. Crowe can be reached at gcrowe@catholicherald.com.