On March 16, the Technology Student Association (TSA) of Loganville Christian Academy (LCA) attended a statewide competition at the Classic Center in Athens, GA. They joined 2,754 registered applicants from high schools across the state of Georgia who participated in the annual event. The students were accompanied by Mrs. Sherry Morris, the Upper School STEM teacher at LCA, and Mr. Mark Davis.
Considering it was the first competition that LCA’s TSA Team had ever participated in, the results were beyond expectations when they placed 3rd in the Engineering Design division, qualifying for Nationals in Washington, D.C. in late June. This project was designed and presented by Bryce Delong, Kade Smith, and Madeleine Tran, and they competed against seventeen other projects in the division. The theme of the Engineering Design project was how to cost effectively and efficiently use solar power in and around the house. The group proposed that to power an average home system forty-three solar panels would be needed. They demonstrated the use of two solar panels—one powered an electric car and the other ran the basic devices in the house like fans, lights, and AC.
The TSA Team at LCA also entered projects in two other events at the competition. Kayla Barry, Justin Morris, Madeleine Tran, and Kyle Winstanley placed 6th out of sixty-one total entries in the Music Production event. Students in this event were required to create a short song up to three minutes long that will be used at the National TSA Competition in June. Mr. Ryan Saltamacchio, LCA’s high school computer teacher, recommended that the students create their song using EarSketch, a free program designed by the Georgia Institute of Technology, that allows you to write music entirely by coding. Each sound has a unique code, and that code is implemented into the whole song’s code, sounding like actual instruments.
The final event LCA entered at the competition was the Board Game Design division. Austin Hall, Gavin Gonzalez, Justin Morris, and Kyle Winstanley had created their own original game—complete with the board, box, instructions, and game pieces designed in CAD and printed on the 3D printer in LCA’s STEM lab. Though not placing in this division, the students displayed amazing creativity and collaboration in their project.
When asked about her experience in the TSA competition, Tran said, “My biggest takeaway was expanding my comfort zone in doing something I had never done before and learning about different technology fields that I could have a career in one day in the future.”
