Keech 3D hosts students from Bendigo SE Secondary College and Eaglehawk Secondary College

Date: Monday 28th August – Friday 1st September

Host: Keech 3D

Schools: Combined team from Bendigo South East Secondary College and Eaglehawk Secondary College

Facilitators: John Tabone and Julie Mason

The students wrote:

On our first day at Keech 3D we were presented with an issue to fix. We spoke
to Michael Taylor, who told us about the difficulties he was facing, after becoming paraalysed from the waist down in 2003, following a motorcycle accident .  Michael took up hand cycling competitively on the world stage and Michael rides roughly 60km a day,
usually in the morning, and does more than 500km a week. The problems we
were presented with came in two parts, one involving a wheelchair, and one
involving a hand cycle.

The issue that Michael Taylor was facing with his wheelchair, is the fact that when it’s dark, he finds it difficult to see where he is going. Because he uses both his hands
to turn the wheels of his chair, it eliminates the option of holding a personal light source like a torch. Michael, being a competitive hand cyclist, does a lot of training on the roads.  But because of how small and flat his bike is, there are many safety risks as other
vehicles can’t see him. Our aim was to come up with a solution, using 3D technology,  that would make him more visible to cars, trucks, etc

Overall, our top action plans/strategies were:

• Designing and producing an ‘A’ frame to improve the visibility of Michael and his hand cycle while training.
• Finding lights and other methods of visibility to add to the ‘A’ frame to further increase the apparentness of  Michael and his hand cycle during training.

The students were stars during their work experience week, being filmed for a segment on the local WIN news TV.

http://www.mindshopexcellence.com/how-it-works/sample-programs