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Two sight-impaired students at Edgewood Middle School now have a chance for a typical educational experience because of some untypical computer equipment that was donated to the school.
The students, both of whom are legally blind, now use a computer system donated to the school by Grossnickle Foundation.
The large-screen computer magnifies images up to 32 times their original size, said JoElla Smyth, Edgewood principal.
The equipment can scan pages in regular-size print and read the text aloud if the student can't read the magnified type, she said.
The computer also allows visually impaired students to access the Internet and read Web pages, said Kelly Roberts, marketing manager for Grossnickle Eye Center Inc.
And another component translates text into Braille from regular type, or into type from Braille.
"The biggest difference is that it gives them the capacity to keep up and do work like everyone else," said Smyth, whose son, Sam, is one of the students using the special computer. "They can be more independent to do the work by themselves without depending on someone else to help."
Sam is an honors student at Edgewood and one of his teachers, Paula Harris, was instrumental in arranging for the school to obtain the computer system.
Harris said she mentioned to a friend, Jane Grossnickle, the need for a computer to help visually impaired students, and Grossnickle referred Harris to the Grossnickle Foundation, which paid approximately $4,000 for the system.
The two students who use the computer were "thrilled" to have it as a resource, Harris said. "It makes everything that we do more accessible to them," she said. "I'm not a teacher of the blind and this equipment takes that burden away from me."
Smyth said when the two Edgewood students move on to high school, the computer can go with them unless there is a need for it at Edgewood.
Sam, 12, is a patient of Dr. Steve Grossnickle, ophthalmologist, who in 1991 diagnosed Sam's ailment - combined hamartoma, a disease of the retina with no known cure, Roberts said.
While he cannot yet cure Sam's vision problem, Grossnickle and the foundation can still help Sam see more clearly.
"Our mission at Grossnickle Eye Center is to restore vision to our patients," Grossnickle said. "We hope this donation will help do what medicine is not yet capable of doing."
Each year in the United States, there are approximately 225,000 sudden cardiac deaths. Survival rates can range from 1 to 5 percent in most communities. However, as many as 30 to 50 percent more could survive if cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillators (AED) were used within five minutes of a collapse, according to the National Center For Early Defibrillation at the University of Pittsburgh. Friday, Kosciusko 21st Century Foundation executive director Willis Alt announced the K21 Foundation is granting approximately $209,000 in grants to nine EMS providers in Kosciusko County for the purchase of AEDs. Kosciusko 21st Century Foundation maintains an endowment committed to improving community health and wellness through investments and grants.
Photo by David Slone, Times-Union
