BGSU Technology Fair is a northwest Ohio affair

With high school-student visitors expected from Sylvania to Wapakoneta and from Milan to Antwerp, BGSU’s Northwest Ohio Technology Fair will live up to its name.

The fair, set for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 23, will also welcome more than 60 exhibitors—the most in its four-year history—to the Lenhart Grand Ballroom in the Bowen-Thompson Student Union.

Duane Whitmire, director of the Student Technology Center, called the free event “the University’s way to give back to northwest Ohio.” Highlights will include displays of new technical media, as well as special presentations and drawings for technology-oriented prizes.

Drawings will be held hourly for prizes such as an Apple iPod, a headset player for music off the Web; a Dell Axim, a handheld PDA; a Web camera; computer speakers; a DVD player, and a Jump Drive, a key chain-size data storage unit that plugs into a computer.

WFOB-AM, a Fostoria radio station, is scheduled to broadcast live from the fair from 10 a.m. until noon, and at 12:30 p.m., students from around the region will be on hand for the announcement of winners of BGSU’s first high school Web design contest. A combined 23 entries were judged in three categories: best high school Web page, which carries a $500 cash award; top Web page for a high school organization, with the winning entrant receiving a Canon digital camera, and best personal Web page, whose designer will take home a Palm Zire, a handheld personal digital assistant (PDA).

Suggested by Executive Vice President Linda Dobb, the Web contest has helped the expansion of the Technology Fair by drawing student interest from schools throughout the 21-county region, Whitmire said.

Kim Fleshman, program coordinator at the Student Technology Center and coordinator of the fair, said the event is “more than the computer sitting on your desk.” For example, she cited planned demonstrations by Wood County Hospital, whose representatives will discuss the technology of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), X-rays and computerized axial tomography (CAT) scans, and Cedar Point, which will send staff to explain the making of a roller coaster.

The Cedar Point presentation, from 10-11 a.m., is the first of six breakaway sessions during the day. Others will include demonstrations of digital video as a teaching tool, from 12:30-1:30 p.m., and of Internet2 capabilities, from 2:30-4 p.m.

Cedar Point is a first-time exhibitor at the fair. Also in that category, among others, are the Center of Science and Industry (COSI), which will have a robotics-related display; the city of Bowling Green, focusing on its turbine windmill project, and Granville Middle School in central Ohio. Granville students will demonstrate their work in the PhotoShop software program and three-dimensional animation.

For more information about the fair, check the Web at www.bgsu.edu/offices/studenttech/techfair.