Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams

Hello InvenTeam students:

Here is a great article written by 2007 Acton-Boxborough InvenTeam student Jessica Hatch for the Oct-Nov issue of Imagine. 

The Decombusters  

Best,
Kayla Willis

Hello InvenTeam students,

Read a great article about the Rockport High School InvenTeam: http://www.wickedlocal.com/essex/news/x1295938910.

Thanks for adding comments about the questions we recently posted!

Cheers,

Melissa Makofske

Communications Officer

I want to first address the optimism teenagers have expressed for invention. While we should eagerly embrace their enthusiasm, we must remember that teenagers can be highly irrational and unrealistic. Today’s complex environmental issues have been affecting our society for sometime and we’re still looking for solutions, meaning solutions have been hard to come by. I am astounded that two-thirds of teens (64 percent) are confident they could invent some of these solutions. Teens should not be overly confident that they can invent solutions to solve these problems. To illustrate my point, consider high school basketball (before the “developmental league”). Two years ago, high school students could go straight to the NBA, just like superstars LeBron James and Kevin Garnett. However, these individual success stories gave kids a false hope and many average basketball players thought they too could make the leap. Instead of going to college, they entered the NBA draft and most were rejected. Bottom line, they allowed unrealistic hopes to get the better of them and made poor choices. In that same light, not every high school engineer will be able to solve our energy crisis. That does not mean we should deter their efforts, but we should ensure that students have a both realistic and informed understanding of the energy situation so their enthusiasm does not result in negative consequences, such as poor decision making. By educating students about the environment, we will not only make them more realistic, but better prepared to combat the issues as well.

I would also like to touch on the Index’s sample size. While the Invention Index raises some interesting questions, the 1,004 teen sample size (cited at the bottom of the article) seems too small. For example, Our High School has approximately 550 students, a small community compared to most high schools. Our student body’s opinions would not match those of all the teens in the United States. To that end, teen years are filled with both hormones and emotions, so what teens may want or feel can fluctuate tremendously. Moreover, every teenager has a different emotional status, further complicating matters. Consequently, surveying teenagers demands a larger sample size than for adults to accurately generalize about teens opinions. Yet the Index polled 1,013 adults and only 1,004 teens. Based on personal experience within my own teen community, the Index needs a larger sample size to accurately reflect the views of teenagers, even if statistically the sample size seems accurate.

1. Can technological innovations and inventions solve environmental problems in the next 10 years?

Given the substantial amount of money being poured into energy research, we definitely will discover new environmentally friendly technologies that will help alleviate today’s environmental problems. Whether all that will occur in the next 10 years remains to be seen. Environmental issues such as global warming are complex problems and not easily solvable with one single invention. However, over time and with lots of R&D, I’m certain that we will find solutions to help with these issues

2 . Do you have the ability to invent something that could protect or restore the environment?

Absolutely. As high school students, we can contribute to the research efforts through InvenTeams-like programs. However, there are funding limitations. We do not have billions of dollars backing our research. Governments and large corporations are bound to make discoveries before we can, simply because they have the means to do so. For example, our team invented and are currently constructing a digital ordering interface that allows users to order food with text-messaging. Last week, Apple announced they are planning to release a system that works exactly like ours and they have already patented it. That should not stop our group from trying to design our own, but because we are a smaller operation, corporations like Apple can implement new ideas before smaller groups like us get a chance.

3. What do you see as the value in hands-on, project-based science, technology, engineering and mathematics education and learning in high schools?

The most valuable aspect of doing these projects in high-school is that we gain experience for the future. Learning to manage budgets, negotiate costs, set deadlines, etc, introduces high schoolers to real-world responsibilities and teaches students how to manage projects when they are young. Whether I’m running a lab or managing a project for an engineering company, I will understand how to create a productive learning environment for the people around me and get the best out of my employees. Such projects teach students how to take an idea and make it a reality, which is an essential skill to apply ideas to the real world.