Students wear vision impairment goggles

The health teachers, Jonathan Despot and Amy Palfey, used vision impairment goggles for their health classes. The teachers purchased these new goggles a couple years ago to show the dangers of consuming alcohol on the nervous system. Past students participated in the lab, and future students look forward to it.

“The goggles display vision impairment on different blood alcohol content (BAC) levels along with distortion for night time which is a new feature we have on the goggles. It shows one side of what alcohol can do to someone,” Palfey said.

The Altoona Area School District Foundation provided the grant for the goggles.

“We use the goggles every semester for each of the students, so twice a year,” Palfey said

The vision impairment goggles are used to display a lesson and to educate the younger society about the dangers teenagers and adults face while consuming alcohol.

“Honestly, given the fact that the students are in seventh grade, I am not sure they will remember it. We use one station that the student’s play with an electronic car and they try not to crash into things, but when they do knock something over it really shows the impact. I do hope the experience lasts,” Palfey said.

Seventh grader, Elisha Selfridge, was one of Palfey’s previous students who used the vision impairment goggles.

“I did not like using the goggles that much only because it made you see three of everything that you were surrounded by, but it was actually really fun,” Selfridge said.

She believes many lessons can be learned from the impairment goggles.

“It really shows you how much you can hurt yourself because you can not see straight, I even fell a couple times because of it,” Selfridge said.

The experiment teaches students how drinking impairs their overall mindset.

“It taught me that I could not get away with anything while drinking, and you can get in big trouble if the police catch you drinking and driving,” Selfridge said.

While using the goggles the students go through stations that are supposed to give them the real life illusion of how they would act under alcohol.

“My favorite station was the one where we had to put a puzzle together, I thought it was easy even with the drunk goggles on. You just had to focus and feel which what spot was for the letter,” Selfridge said.

Seventh grader, Hannah Evans, has just started health class, and she is very excited to use the goggles.

“I think it’s going to be fun, I’ve heard it messes up your eyesight and some of my friends said they have fallen while doing it,” Evans said.

Evans has a good idea on how the goggles work.

“It shows the effects that drinking can have on you if you’re not responsible while doing the drinking,” Evans said.