Twelve Teams Get Top ExploraVision Honors

  • 09/01/97

Twelve teams received top honors in the 1997 Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision Awards, which attracted 5,000 entries from K-12 schools in the U.S. and Canada. Working in groups of three or four with a teacher/adviser, students imagined a form of technology 20 years from now and illustrated its potential benefits.

One of the first-place finalists, a team from Cross Street Elementary School in Williston Park, N.Y., envisioned a "trash tummy" device that, much like the human digestive system, processes garbage -- extracting and recycling minerals and breaking the rest down into a clean mixture that can be used for fuel or fertilizer. Two other first-place teams described technologies that could cure many types of blindness.

Each of the four first-place teams received a $10,000 U.S. savings bond. Each second-place team received a $5,000 U.S. bond (or comparable Canadian bond). The ExploraVision Awards are funded by the Toshiba Corp., the Toshiba America Group Co.. and the Toshiba America Foundation, and administered by the National Science Teachers Association. Toshiba/NSTA, Arlington, VA, (800) EXPLOR-9, www.nsta.org/programs/explora.htm.

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