Developed for students entering grades six through nine, Invention Project offers the opportunity to explore the edges of innovation and imagine the possibilities through dreaming, designing, engineering, and making.These young innovators are challenged to create new, original inventions, but they must also consider principles of business such as rapid prototyping, market research, shipping, and profit.
The curriculum is developed by high-profile educators and inventors who specialize in creativity and STEM education. Participants are introduced virtually to some of today’s greatest thinkers, inventors and entrepreneurs — NIHF Inductees and leading collegiate inventors — through personalized video challenges.
Among the innovative sessions for this year:
• Mini-Bot: Teams explore the basics of circuitry and counterbalance as they design and challenge their own motor-powered creatures.
• Gamify: In this session, teams receive game-making materials and are challenged to design their own high-strategy games.
• Innovate: Participants design and invent from scratch, and are empowered to apply their ingenuity, resourcefulness and prototyping abilities.
• Extreme Shoe: Teams explore Business 101 as they develop and market innovative shoes in a mock-free-market economy. Style matters, but so do features and pricing, as well as marketing and manufacturing.
• Next Media: Teams must push the limits of imagination and innovation to design and prototype tomorrow’s media experiences.
Local programs are facilitated and taught by educators who reside and teach in the community. Learn more about this year’s program, or register your young entrepreneur, at www.invent.org/inspire/invention-project6th-9th/programs/.
About Invention Project
Invention Project is a one-of-a-kind program that empowers middle-school students to explore the passion and pride behind turning ideas into inventions and bringing inventions to market. Invention Project is a program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Through hands-on programming, Invention Project encourages young innovators in grades six through nine to discover science, technology, engineering, and mathematics curriculum inspired by some of the world’s great inventors — the National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees. For more information, visit invent.org/inspire/invention-project-6th-9th.
