Hopewell News

Hopewell High School was recently awarded a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam grant in the amount of $7,350 to create U-Learn, a 21st century student desk designed to improve the student learning experience. Hopewell High School is one of 15 high schools nationwide to be selected as an InvenTeam this year.
InvenTeams are teams of high school students, teachers, and mentors that receive grants up to $10,000 each to invent technological solutions to real-world problems. Entering its seventh year, this initiative of the Lemelson-MIT Program aims to inspire a new generation of inventors.
“Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders. By encouraging a sustainable culture of invention in schools and communities, we hope to empower high school students to explore their interests in science, technology, engineering, and math during high school, college, and beyond. Further, our goal is to instill confidence in youth to solve problems they encounter,” said Leigh Estabrooks, invention educator officer of the Lemelson-MIT Program, who manages the initiative. “The InvenTeam experience provides valuable exposure to these fields and enhances professional skills such as teamwork and leadership.”
Andrei Dacko, Engineering Technology Program Instructor at Hopewell High School initiated the InvenTeam application process last spring and attended training at MIT in June to help prepare the final proposal. A prestigious panel of judges composed of educators and researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University, representatives from the industry, MIT staff and alumni, and former Lemelson-MIT Award winners assembled this fall and selected Hopewell High School for one of this year’s InvenTeam grants.
“Ultimately, we will invent a student chair-desk that will incorporate the latest in ergonomic and industrial design principles, be cost effective, and will have a small carbon footprint. Our invention will integrate seamlessly into the classroom setting, set students in an optimum state of learning and remembering, and increase their overall level of student achievement.”
The Hopewell High School InvenTeam plans to work with local colleges, companies, and other technical experts specializing in ergonomics, engineering and industrial design who will guide the students through the development of their invention.
“When we started the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam grant application back in January the students were blown away by the possibility of winning up to $10,000 to realize their own invention. Since ideation, creative thinking, and problem-solving are critical skills that our Engineering Technology students learn and utilize daily, the InvenTeams competition is a perfect extension. Our initial list of inventions included ideas such as a temperature controlled pillow, a low heat turbine, and a voice command dog door to name a few but, after ranking each idea against criteria such as practicality, public interest and student interest, the 21st century student desk won out. While brainstorming the limitations of our current classroom desks C.J. Neal, one of our team members, captured the essence of our problem statement best when he stated, “these desks just don’t make you want to learn.” To add, we discovered during our research that, the desks we are sitting in today have not changed at all since 1954, the year the design’s original patent was granted.
Over the next nine months, the Hopewell High School InvenTeam will develop its U-Learn Student Desk. With U-Learn they will seek to put an end to sore student backsides, bruised knees, pinched hips, short attention spans, behavioural issues and poor achievement in the classroom. In June the students will showcase a prototype of their invention at EurekaFest at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. EurekaFest, presented by the Lemelson-MIT Program.