Author: Vicky Wu Davis

When I was in high school going through Youth CITIES March to May Bootcamp myself, I was exposed to an entirely new world of innovative leaders and a new way of thinking, and pushed myself to present my work in front of a crowd of people far larger than I’d ever presented to in a classroom setting. It was a whole new way of thinking, and gave me the confidence I needed to make the transition to an independent college student. Now that I’ve graduated from college and returned to Youth CITIES to mentor the L3 Innovation Challenge, seeing these students grow over just 7 short weeks has made me realize all over again how impactful this program is and its ability to introduce students to a whole new way…

Waiting with a number of students in the lobby of Lab Central for Class 5 to get started, we turned toward the entrance, hearing a loud, high pitch voice of someone singing and cheering through the entrance of the building. Accompanied by Youth CITIES founder Vicky Wu Davis, aka her mother, as well as her eight and eleven year old brothers, it was none other than Sanibel, the famous four year old students have been learning about and beginning to design for! She entered the building dragging a rolling suitcase that was bigger than her, and when it got stuck on the doorframe and her brothers jumped to help out, she screamed back “My do it!” in the most adorable voice I’ve ever heard. Once we all entered the classroom…

At the end of last week’s blog I mentioned a conversation we had as a class about playing basketball with a visual impairment. This discussion came up again in Class Four, and Vicky Wu Davis, Sanibel’s mother, went into more detail on the conversation in the latest blog post. I’d like to use this example again to illustrate some of the main points of this week’s class.  As a class we discussed potential problem areas and entered a high level discussion about ways that technology could solve particular problems that a blind individual might encounter. One student, Vicky’s eleven year old son, brought up a great point that implementing this technology in a basketball game could lead to unfairness on the court or even cheating, giving a player with a…

One of the many things going through my mind during a night of insomnia, are the reflections of Class 2 for this year’s L3 Innovation Challenge.  What an exciting night last night!  Class 2 included a deeper dive on the Challenge we issued, developing empathy, realizing the power of observation, and doing a crash course on vision science.  While science and engineering are often lumped together as STEM, traditionally scientists and engineers didn’t work together.  However, convergence has these two disciplines often needing to work together to solve some complex problems, and I wanted both types of students to understand/respect the value of each other in partnership. Last week, a CITIES Scholar – turned student mentor – turned mentor/guest instructor wrote in his blog writeup  “Technology exists in a context defined…