It’s not uncommon to see face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For many frontline medical workers, they are a part of their daily attire.
Principal for Bessborough School in Moncton Nick Mattatall says teachers, students, staff and parents helped create the earsaver. It hold the masks in place, to avoid irritation from the elastics behind the ears.
Using a 3D printer, they’ve made and distributed over 900 of them in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
“The nice thing about them is they can be sterilized with a Lysol wipe because they are non-porous. Not everyone has to have their own, and they can be shared between shifts,” Mattatall says.
In Vanessa Poirier-LeBlanc’s grade 5 classroom, the 3D printer can only be used for the greater good.
“Poirier-Leblanc, her mom is also a heath care worker. She was hearing from her mom about how it was causing irritation on the back of her ears having to wear a mask all day,” Mattatall says.
He says to keep the students involved in their home learning , they issued a challenge to use household items to come up with their own style of earsaver.
“Teaching kids to find a need and solve the need. So, if this is something that people need moving forward, then we’ll look at using a higher capacity printers or maybe if it is picked up by someone in the manufacturing and they produce them even faster than we can.”
