SmartHomes Update

Below is a brief update on what has been happening in and around Imagine!’s SmartHomes lately. The report was produced by Imagine! Foundation Executive Director Patti Micklin for the Foundation Board of Directors.

• Interest surrounding the Imagine! SmartHomes project continues to be strong. Last month, SmartHomes ambassador extraordinaire Leona Stoecker provided a tour of the Charles Family SmartHome in Longmont to a woman visiting from Ukraine who has a child with developmental disabilities. She is part of a group of professional women from Ukraine who were with Leona’s Rotary Club as part of the US State Department Russian Leadership Training Program. Since the tour, the women’s group is committed to creating an NGO to support people with disabilities in Ukraine. SmartHomes guru Greg Wellems provided her with background information and links to the SmartHomes planning so they may replicate some of it. 
• You can learn about presentations associated with the Imagine!’s SmartHomes SmartSupports projects by visiting - http://imaginessmarthomesblog.blogspot.com/ and entering either presentable and/or presentations into the search bar, found in the upper left-hand corner of the SmartHomes Blog. 
• College students continue to be engaged. Last semester, a group of University of Colorado Engineering students in Associate Professor Melinda Piket-May’s class worked on projects to design simple adaptive technologies that aid increased independence for some of the individuals Imagine! serves. This week, Alex Andrews and Fred Hobbs gave a presentation to students of Sri Kurniawan, Associate Professor at the Baskin School of Engineering at the University of California Santa Cruz. Professor Kurniawan is collaborating with Imagine! by having some of her students help to create apps for Imagine! clients as part of a student project.
• Starting in this month, tours of the Charles Family SmartHome in Longmont will be held on the 3rd Monday of each month at 10:00 a.m. We made this change to accommodate the residents’ schedule changes.