1/26-1/27: Roosevelt High School (Minneapolis, MN)

Project: Portable smoke detector for the hearing-impaired

Roosevelt High School is a large urban school in Minneapolis. The student population is composed mostly of minority students and the children of recent immigrants from Somalia, Mexico, Vietnam and Russia.

Jim McComas-Bussa teaches math to mixed classes of sophomores, juniors and seniors. Jim is part of a team of teachers that encourage a real-world approach to teaching math and employ weekly exercises that involve highly practical applications of math. The day I was there, the students were charged with a budget exercise that led students to the hourly wage they would need to support their desired lifestyle. It was an interesting exercise.

The Roosevelt HS InvenTeam is composed mostly of sophomores and juniors. The project is the basis of the school's first attempt to establish a robotics club.

I met several people at the school, including a physics teacher who, once he heard where I was from, happily produced a copy of a Lemelson Center video! He may apply for InvenTeams next year.

After sitting down with the InvenTeam and going through my presentation, we went to The Bakken (http://www.thebakken.org/). The Bakken was established by the founder of Medtronic and focuses on teaching about electricity and magnetism and for a fee, provides workshop space and mentoring to student groups. It's an amazing place and reminded me of MIT's Edgerton Center (see photo).

The Bakken
Originally uploaded by Joshua Schuler.

Jim worked at The Bakken during his recent sabbatical.

At the Bakken, the a sub-set of the team worked with their mentor on building an early prototype, trying to attach the different components in the correct sequence and program them to communicate -- to send a signal to vibrate and flash LEDs on a portable device. They were successful that afternoon in making the device vibrate, but neither the mentor nor I were convinced they knew why they were successful or if they could repeat it the next time. The InvenTeam is not yet working with the potential beneficiaries of their invention. I hope my visit will inspire them to do so.

Worth noting: There are several companies in the Minneapolis area that could sponsor InvenTeams, including 3M, Target and BestBuy.