Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2003. Mattie was a year and a half old. When Mattie came around, our plant stand was transformed. We dedicated one shelf just for Patches the cat. Patches wanted a place free from Mattie and his noise and running around. However, you can see that as Mattie got older, he was taller and could reach up to touch her! Patches was a great cat and understood that Mattie was important to the family and therefore no hissing or scratching was allowed.
The Mattie tell tale sign was in this photo too.... his sippy cup filled with milk. Linus had his blanket and Mattie had his sippy cup! That cup went with us everywhere! You can also see the pumpkins that we collected from each of the fall festivals we attended with Mattie that year.
Quote of the day: A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. ~ Amelia Earhart
A few weeks ago, I received an email from the Director of Technology at Mattie's school. I had interacted with Richard before since he encourages his students to participate in our Annual Foundation Walk. However, I never met Richard in person until today. Richard's life has been personally touched by cancer as his dad recently died from colon cancer.
When Richard wrote to me a few weeks ago, he told me that he has a class that is learning about 3-D printing. He wants to add an entrepreneurial component to his class this year and has selected Mattie Miracle to benefit from this project. The class is tasked to design something, print it through their 3-D printers and then sell it at the campus bookstore. All proceeds going to Mattie Miracle. However, this is only one of Richard's ideas. I mentioned to Richard that I would love the opportunity to interact with his students and to learn more about the projects they wanted to design for this Mattie Miracle project.
With that, Richard explained that he would like to educate his students on childhood cancer and encourage them to use their engineering skills to design and build something that will be of use to children in the hospital and their parents. Basically to create an object that has practical use and can enhance quality of life. I thought this was an excellent idea, since I think bringing awareness to teens about childhood cancer is important. We talked about bringing in guest speakers to the classroom so that the students could get ideas and insights on what object should be designed for this population. I am thinking of inviting a child life specialist, a caregiver, and childhood cancer survivor.
This is what the technology classroom looks like! It is very hands on, visually appealing, and it draws you in because you want to touch all the gadgets. In reality it reminds me of the "shop" class I had to take when I was in high school. Of course NOW everything is with technology and not hand tools.
3-D printers. It is hard to believe that something so small can produce all sorts of 3-D objects.
Students work independently and each of them designs an object. But naturally when we create something, we create it with ourselves in mind. If you want to sell a product though, more than one mindset is needed! The beauty of the class is that students share their thoughts and ideas and the other students give feedback. In many cases the feedback received helps to alter the object's design to make it more useful and applicable to others. In a way, it is like working in the real world, where you consult with others and test your product.
The most intricate object is in the shape of a heart. But this is NO ordinary heart. It moves, rotates, almost like a rubic cube! You can turn each of the parts and it changes the shape from a heart to something else.
The second object is a bracelet that says "saints," which is the school's mascot, and the third object that is white is a chess piece, the castle. The final object in grey is an i-phone cord holder. It wraps the cord neatly so the cord will never fray.
I reached out to Georgetown University Hospital this afternoon to see if they would be interested in this class project. I would love the hospital's buy in so that they can help give the students some input on a potential object that needs to be created. Richard has even offered to take the 3-D printers to the hospital, so children in the hospital can see how this process works, and even given feedback on the objects created!
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