Quaker Valley students gain real world experience creating Tom Hanks movie-inspired home for a virtual assistant

When New Castle entrepreneur Jordon Rooney wanted to showcase his latest artificial intelligence project, he knew who to contact: a Quaker Valley High School teacher.

Rooney, a personal brand coach and chief executive officer at Jaster, is a longtime friend of pre-engineering and technology teacher Matt Dado.

He reached out about creating a home for JABA — Jaster Athlete Brand Assistant.

The AI helps athletes efficiently organize and track brand activities as well as streamlines compliance monitoring for NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) administrators among a host of other tasks, according to the product’s website.

It was to be on display at the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics convention in Las Vegas in June.

Dado saw it as an opportunity for his auto computer-aided design students to get some real world experience.

“It’s as real as it gets,” he said. “They’re making something not for a grade, but for a client. I had a really good group of kids in the best environment where they had access to all the 3D printers. I wanted their skills to be tested.”

Rooney purchased all the materials and had one design request; make something like “Zoltar,” the fortune teller in the Tom Hanks classic movie “Big.”

The film is about a 12-year-old boy who makes a wish to a carnival machine to become big, and wakes up in an adult body but with the same personality.

What the Quaker Valley youths came up with was something that had Rooney’s mind dancing as if it were bouncing on piano keys, which is also an iconic part of the film.

“The idea was, ‘What’s a visual embodiment of our AI advising you (and) giving you perspective,’” Rooney said. “I remembered that machine. … What if we could create that type of feel with what we’re doing?

“I wasn’t expecting this. This is a lot better.”

Students got to work in early May. There was a core of five including senior Miles Cannon and sophomore Will Newlin. Several others also contributed.

They created a nearlty 7-foot-tall box with 36-inch-by-36-inch plexiglass pieces.

The base features decals inspired by images on the product’s website. The name JABA is written in orange blocks against a yellow background at the top.

The interlocking pieces that create the frame of the box are in shades of purple, blue and orange.

Students used the modeling software Fusion 360 to design everything. It took about three weeks from start to finish.

“The division of work made it so much easier,” Miles said. “I would get the initial draft and construct that; send it off to Jett (Jordan) for him to make improvements and then get help from Daniel (Leathers) and Tucker (Garvey) to ultimately put the thing together. Without my team, it would have been impossible.”

Miles said he wasn’t phased by Dado’s challenge of having to construct and deconstruct the project so it would be ready for travel and use at a national convention.

“I knew immediately that all my friends and I could handle it,” he said. “I knew that we possessed the skills for it. It was a little confusing and there was a lack of artistic vision (at) the beginning. We didn’t get to ‘go’ right off the jump.”

Having a bit of a slow start might be due to the fact that the students were not born when the 1988 Penny Marshall-directed fantasy comedy-drama was released, or when it was available on VHS and even DVD in the early 2000s.

This was the first year Will was in Dado’s CAD program. He was in charge of cutting out the slots for the speakers and other parts as well as wrapping the decals.

“I think given the time restraints we had, it’s phenomenal,” the sophomore said of the finished product. “It makes me feel like what I’m doing in school has a greater purpose. I think I’m going to take away lots of applicable learning and use this in real life. The most challenging was probably wrapping everything. You can’t mess up. If you mess up you have to redo it.”

Rooney gave the students high praise. He believes their youth provided a different perspective than experienced designers.

“They much more likely get what’s cool and interesting over a lot of professionals, especially in the space we’re in,” he said. “We wanted their perspective. Experience isn’t going to make you good at coming up with ideas.

”Obviously, you’ve got to know the fundamentals and the tools. I think there’s an element to the young people having a fresh approach. They don’t follow the same set of rules as everybody else, and that’s what we want. We want to be disruptive.”