“Oh! I just got an idea!” Students at Carden of Tucson turn their ideas into inventions. A unique program called Invention Convention challenges students to find ways to change the world. This year’s Invention Convention will be held March 8 from 12:30 to 4 p.m. at the University of Arizona ENR2.
The Invention Convention started in Connecticut in 1983, and asks students to find problems that need solutions. These solutions become brand new inventions. Educators at Carden of Tucson loved this idea and wanted to bring it to their students.
One student from Carden of Tucson rose to the challenge and ended up winning first place at the convention last year. Macy, then a seventh grader, has Type 1 Diabetes. She has to give herself daily medical injections of insulin. Giving herself injections created holes and left blood stains on her clothes. Macy decided to do something about it. She invented a patch or a zipper that allows you to give yourself a shot without damaging your clothing and called it Needle Point. Needle Point can help anyone who has to give themselves medical injections frequently. This was a problem that Macy faced and it led to a lifechanging invention. It helps Macy daily and would help many others, too.
Students at Carden are thinking like inventors and are beginning to formulate ideas for this year’s Invention Convention. Some of the early stages of this process are narrowing down ideas for their project and starting to fill out their invention logs.
Next, and most importantly, students begin the hard work of designing and building their prototypes. Sometimes it takes many attempts to find the design that works. After creating the right prototype, students move on to the final steps. These steps are building a display board to showcase the invention and preparing the final presentation speech. Inventions are judged on creativity, usefulness, how it benefits the world and the enthusiasm of the presentation. Invention Convention gives students the opportunity to look at the world from a different perspective and a way to solve the problems that we see.
This process teaches us about creativity, being okay with making mistakes, and learning to try again and again and again. Hopefully, in the end, we have created something useful that no one has ever seen before. By identifying problems that need solutions, we can make the world a better place.
Does this process sound interesting and fun to you? If it does, you can do it, too. You never know, you may have an idea that you can turn into an invention that will help you and others around you. To find more information, and sign up, go to https://forms.gle/nKoRBbGQ56kCC7EU7 You may also contact Mrs. Livingood at Carden of Tucson at 520-293-6661 or email blivingood@cardenoftucson.org
