Last spring, I got the chance to write a lesson for NewsHour Extra’s “Invention Education” series. I see my role as a facilitator that will help students dust off a part of their brain that will be forever active once awakened. If this were merely a job to me, the kids in front of me would pay the price. And I don’t see it as just my job to do this but my passion to do it. Invention education is about “real problems that affect real people.” As a result, the students will also give their projects serious attention. These key stakeholders do not have time to waste on projects that don’t take their work seriously. At the end of the unit, we invite in police officers and firefighters for a showcase who then provide students feedback on the devices. There is no room for loosely pieced together projects that are hacked together without thought or true purpose.įor example, each semester my class invents devices to assist local fire and police departments. Students will also often say, “I don’t know what problem I should solve.” My reply is similar: “I don’t either, but it is going to be a lot of fun seeing you find one.”Īt this point in the process, students begin to realize that not only do they need to identify a problem, but have to clearly understand a problem. That is the truth: “I don’t know.” But it doesn’t scare me like it would have done in my first years of teaching. In short, we are talking about real problems that affect real people.Īn epiphany occurs when the students in my classroom realize that I don’t know the answer either. The concept of the “invention design process” or “engineering design process” involves students completing a series of steps, including identifying a viable problem, developing potential solutions and ultimately fabricating a prototype that proves they can improve the lives of beneficiaries.

In a world where students are often provided the problem, or spoon-fed a solution, or end up checking their answers against those in the back of the book, I am introducing them to a foreign concept. So simple and yet so difficult to answer, that essential question is what I ask my high school engineering students when they begin the study of inventions.

Inventor student