Annual UW-Platteville Holiday Toy Hack set for Nov. 14 at the Huff
The hack is back.
UW-Platteville is set to hold the ninth annual Holiday Toy Hack on Saturday, Nov. 14, from 1-4 p.m. in the Huff Family Innovation Center in Sesquicentennial Hall. Students from all disciplines are invited to attend and help adapt electronic toys so children with special needs can easily activate them using external switches. The event's founder, engineering physics professor Hal Evenson, and students distribute the toys to families and children's charities across southern Wisconsin.
For example, a special needs child may lack the strength or dexterity to trigger a doll or stuffed animal's features through a hug. A hack volunteer would work to connect an external button to the toy that the child could simply push to trigger the voice or movement.
Volunteers don't have to be engineering majors to participate. Everyone helps everyone figure out how to modify the toys, Evenson said.
"They have to play with it, figure out what features they want to modify," Evenson said. "Then they have to open it up with special screwdrivers and then they poke around inside, and we don't always know what's inside."
The event has been growing in popularity every year. Eighty students from 20 majors volunteered last year, Evenson said, and this year he's planning for as many as 100.
For Evenson, the hack is personal. He has a nephew on the autism spectrum, and for more than a decade the professor has volunteered at Camp AweSum, a summer camp in northern Wisconsin for those touched by autism. He got the idea for the toy hack after learning about similar programs at Ohio State University and Washington University during an American Society of Mechanical Engineers conference and ran with it.
"For me personally, I get a huge kick out of both ends of the event," Evenson said. "Distributing the toys is great. You can't beat that. But I enjoy the hacking event as well. It's a challenge for the students. They know they're doing a good thing and they're applying skills. I get such an enjoyment out of the student side of things."
Families interested in obtaining a modified toy can register here: https://go.uwplatt.edu/toyhackwiia.
Evenson uses donated funds to purchase the toys as well as tools, wires, connectors and switches for modifications. People can contribute by searching for the “Toy Hack Project Fund" at http://foundation.uwplatt.edu/g/giving.