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Ask Logan High School senior Ben Moore what he wants to be when he grows up, and he’ll tell you an electrical or computer engineer. Ask him how he’s so sure that’s what he wants to become, and he’ll tell you it’s partly because of the Project Lead the Way Program at LHS. As a member of the first group to complete four years of the program, Moore has learned skills in the engineering field. And those skills have led he and others in Project Lead the Way to join The Ohio State University college of engineering in the fall.
The group of five demonstrated its engineering abilities during a presentation at LHS Tuesday, when the students unveiled two apps they designed for the iPhone, iPad and other smart technology. Not only did the students create two apps, but they chose to design apps that could have an impact locally. The first — an app containing information and a trail map of Old Man’s Cave — can be used to orient hikers to where they are in the park from the convenience of their iPhone.
And the best part? It doesn’t require a cell signal to use. Considering cell phone service is spotty at best in the state park, that’s something the group considered when designing the app. “It’s called a native app,” Moore explained. “All the stuff within the app, including all the pictures and text files, are within the app.” The app not only displays a map of the park, but also includes the history of Old Man’s Cave, along with some information about Hocking County. The second app the group designed was a Washboard app, and allows users to take an icon of a wooden spoon, dice or guitar pick and stream it across an icon of a washboard, mimicking the sound those objects would make if a person was actually playing the washboard.
		Although the apps aren’t available for download at the app store, they could be later this year if the students move forward with plans to incorporate into a company. The group even works so well together that they’ve applied to room together in the dorms at OSU. Moore joined Project Lead the Way as a freshman because he enjoyed math and science. He says the
project has given him a lot of experience working with engineering principles on a college level. “This district became one of the pilots for Project Lead the Way, which is a national curriculum,” said Jeff Daubenmire, director of curriculum and instruction at the Logan-Hocking School District, during the presentation. “Many schools come and visit us and look at what we’re doing here, and so it’s an excellent program. It’s maybe one of the best-kept secrets that we have.” During their freshman year, the group learned about basic engineering principles, before moving onto different physics and engineering aspects their sophomore year. Digital electronics and electrical engineering principles were the focus of the group’s junior year, and they moved onto using circuits and integrated circuit chips and creating different types of logic using binary code. Their senior year involved learning about robotics and automation and the basics of programming languages. They even designed a robot and programmed it to read a specific color to find out where it should go on a course. Once there, the robot picked up a small wooden block and dropped it into a hole located at a different place on the course. Several local community members were at the presentation too, including Dennis Heebink, an organizer of the annual Washboard Festival. “I would love to introduce this to the festival this year,” he said. “I would love to introduce you guys and have a school program at the festival, and let a lot of people that come here to this festival see what goes on here at the high school and see how exciting it is.” “I was really impressed on the instruments, on how you keyed the length of the time that the spoon or an instrument takes to go down (the washboard) with the sound,” said Susie McKinnon, director of operations at Hocking Hills Tourism Association. “That had to be a bit of programming. I recognize that; that’s pretty advanced. That’s pretty sophisticated stuff, so that’s good.” “Our ability to produce apps is beyond what it was at the beginning of the year,” Moore explained. “We had to start from scratch, and at the very beginning we had no idea what we were getting into.” The group will take its knowledge with them to Columbus this fall, and who knows — maybe some of them will even come back to Hocking County when they’re done.