Congratulations to our 1st Year Engineering Class as they have taken 2nd prize in a National Product Design Competition. Over 30 schools throughout Ireland were represented in this competition and we were very pleased to be prize winners.

The students entered this competition last November and came up with the idea of designing a device that would help out their visually impaired class mates. One of the first year Engineers is visually impaired and sometimes finds it difficult to see the board from his seat, so students looked to design a develop a device that would help him and other classmates out.

The VI-ccup is a simple device, like a tripod, that allows a students to rotate a tablet, phone, etc. so that they can zoom in on the board or into their book. The VI-ccup allows for 360 degree rotation and for the device to be pushed forward or pulled back to view a text book, copy, etc.

Our students made great efforts to develop this design, they learned about the design cycle of a product, how to work as a team and how to meet deadlines that they set themselves. The students also learned to use 3D CAD software to represent their design and made a video of their efforts. All of this contribute to essential Engineering skills which they showed tremendous ability in.

Second prize in this competition includes 1000Euro IT support for the school and each students received a voucher for STEM products from an Irish website.

Well done to everybody involved, we hope to see more from this group in the future and a special thanks to Mr Mc Namara, who helped to guide them during this project.