Tehachapi youth design innovative apron
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Valley Oaks Charter School students who have entered an international competition include, left to right, Isaac Sayler, Ricky Peregina and Micah Salyer Team members not pictured include Kent Schornick, David Salyer, Colin Booker, Andrew Nitcsh and Alicia Camarena.
Locals in international competition
The Tehachapi Turbines are a home school team from Valley Oaks Charter School that have designed a hand-sanitizing apron as part of the First Lego League (FLL)'s competition. The FLL Global Innovation Award is designed to encourage and assist FLL teams to further develop their innovative solutions to real-world problems. This year, the FLL Food Factor season challenged kids around the world to solve a food safety problem. The Turbines are one of five California teams involved in the international competition.
The team has seven boys and one girl, ages 9 to 14. Team members are Isaac Sayler, Ricky Peregrina, Micah Salyer, Kent Schornick, David Salyer, Colin Booker, Andrew Nitcsh and Alicia Camarena. They chose the name to honor the Tehachapi Pass, home to the second largest wind turbine farm in the world.
Two of the team members received their food handler's permits, through an online course and couldn't wait to share what they learned with family and friends. It provided the team with the necessary information regarding sanitation safety. During many hours of practice the team members learned a lot about each other; and discovered who on the team shouldn't be given too much soda and who shouldn't eat an entire Costco box of Slim Jims (it was the same kid!). The team met twice a week to work on the project. They spent a lot of time designing and redesigning the Hand Sanitizing Apron, six times to be exact, and presenting their findings to their teachers, friends, and families. The design is being fine tuned one more time and the team plans to manufacture and sell the aprons as a fund-raiser for their Lego team Robotics.
The apron is restaurant quality with two pockets. The wipe packages are placed into the pockets, and individual wipes are pulled through a slit in the pocket (just like the top of a tissue box).The reason the wipes come through the slits is so that you do not contaminate your hands by putting them into a dirty pocket. The kids are hoping to have metal grommets placed on the pockets where the wipes pull through.
The basic idea for the apron came from the fact that as we cook we all tend to wipe our hands on our aprons without much thought. People cross-contaminate their hands and food in this way. The hand sanitizing wipe, accessed right from the apron, serves as a reminder to keep hands clean, but also provides a simple way to do so.
The wipes can be used not only to clean hands, but also to open doors, turn faucets on and off, etc. The apron design is innovative and even the judges were amazed at the simplicity.
The team won the "Gracious Professionalism" award and were given the opportunity to advance to the LA Regional Competition at the Los Angeles First Lego League Championship tournament. The apron was nominated for the FLL Global Innovation Award.
The Tehachapi Turbines asks the community to support their unique, simple, and innovative "Hand-Sanitizing Apron. FLL has created an online site that allows supporters to vote once daily.
To vote go to: fllinnovationaward.firstlegoleague.org/hand-sanitizing-apron.
