Huron company wins tech award

HURON — The Greater Cleveland Partnership recognized Huron-based company n2y at its annual Best of Tech Awards on Thursday.The partnership's technology devision, OHTec, presented n2y — a company specializing in creating education products for students with unique learning needs — with the Best Technology Solution, Product or Device award."We are honored and thrilled with this recognition," n2y vice president Margaret deBoer said.OHTec has hosted the awards for the past 13 years to recognize innovative companies in northeast Ohio. Those representing n2y received recognition for the company's newest service, Positivity, which helps manage classrooms and encourages students to self-regulate their behavior."Positivity helps teachers manage their classroom and keeps students on schedule before a behavioral issue happens," n2y CEO Christin Wostmann said. "It's not a reactive behavior product. It's a proactive behavior product."Speech-language pathologist Jacquie Clark, Wostmann's mother, founded n2y in 1997 when she started a weekly newsletter to provide students with special needs current news in a format they could understand and with which they could engage."She saw a real need for content for her students with complex communication needs," Wostmann said. "There wasn't anything out there that motivated or excited them into wanting to communicate with their voice or a device."Clark started a dial-up subscription service to share the newsletter with other educators after she received positive feedback."It was one of the first subscription education businesses around," Wostmann said. "A newspaper each week that had symbol support so students using those visuals in classrooms and on communication devices could understand what's going on in the world and communicate with others about it."The company added more products to help students, including Unique Learning System, a curriculum product, and SymbolStix Prime, a database of images used for communication. Positivity, its newest award winning product, launched earlier this year."Positivity is helping teachers and their unique learners by keeping the focus in the classroom on learning — proactively teaching students to self-regulate and keeping them on task," deBoer said. "As part of the larger n2y offering, it rounds out our total special education solution."Reach reporter Michael Harrington at michaelharrington@sanduskyregister.com, follow the Register at Facebook.com/SanduskyRegisterHuron-based n2y won an award at the annual Best of Tech Awards for its Positivity product to reduce behavior issues with students with unique education needs.