Being the biggest tech-savvy student at Explo, Elliot takes classes which help him with his software skills, so he can bring his noble inventions into reality. Today, he shares some of his innovative ideas with us.
My favorite course is Mobile App Design. I have been meaning to figure out how to do that [app design], but I haven’t figured out properly how — and here I can do it. My interest is in technology. I am great with technology and I wanted to make my own app. I was thinking about making a button that you can reprogram to have on your home screen. A custom widget so you can change what that little button does and carry out specific functions.
Let’s say you feel like you’re being followed, you can instantly share your location or make a call to a friend, take a photo of what your surroundings are. Or you’re a student and you go home and your parents aren’t home. You can hit that button and it automatically sends your parents a message, like, “Hey mom, I’m home. Everything’s going well.” I am also taking Computer Engineering. I like gadgets, but I have a problem with programming them. If you ask me to put together a fan, I can do that. Or a flashlight. Or anything. I am good at hardware, but with software, I can’t put anything together. I can’t tell a machine how to function, but I can put it together. I am here to learn the other side.
Basically, I want to make technology that makes tasks easier, but not in a way where people can get lazy.
I have ideas for inventions that I want to put together. I don’t exactly have prototypes, but I have ideas that I will put together soon and hopefully sell. In my school back in Florida, I have a friend whose name is Maddy. She only has one arm, and although she is really successful with her arm — she’s one of the best volleyball players there and she playes the violin — I notice that she’s had some trouble with technology. She can’t really get into her phone. She has a plastic arm, so she has to put the phone in her arm, use the thumb, and put it back so she can get into her phone. I have some ideas to allow prosthetics to be used with technology. I don’t really want to go into it, because there aren’t any patents yet.
Basically, I want to make technology that makes tasks easier, but not in a way where people can get lazy. I want to make something that benefits, yet doesn’t make things difficult.
Mari Armei