ERIC Number: EJ831331
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Mar-4
Pages: 3
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0277-4232
EISSN: N/A
A Very Bright Idea
Cavanagh, Sean
Education Week, v28 n23 p25-27 Mar 2009
This article reports that young inventors at a Maryland high school are not only learning scientific principles, but also teamwork and the tenets of patent law. Twice a week, 10 members of the Clarksburg High School's Coyote Inventors Club gather in a second-floor computer lab to peck away at building a deceptively simple device: a cable that lights up on contact, thus making it easier to find amid the tangled rat's nest of wires behind most computers. Their work requires persistence, group cooperation, applied math and science skills--and, when it comes to the precise design of their product, a commitment to keeping some things secret. The students hope to take their invention--dubbed the "Torch Cord"--several steps further. Their goal for their device is to secure a patent, the basic legal document that makes their product their own and forbids others from making, using, or selling it without permission. The Clarksburg group is one of 16 high school teams chosen to participate in a nationwide grant program called "the InvenTeams initiative," which sponsors students' efforts to build scientific and technological devices of their own creation. The goal is to stoke a passion for science among students, and to nourish scientific inventiveness that will lead them to even greater intellectual and entrepreneurial heights as they advance to college and the workforce.
Descriptors: Intellectual Property, High Schools, Scientific Principles, Grants, Teamwork, Problem Solving, Confidentiality, Technology Transfer
Editorial Projects in Education. 6935 Arlington Road Suite 100, Bethesda, MD 20814-5233. Tel: 800-346-1834; Tel: 301-280-3100; e-mail: customercare@epe.org; Web site: http://www.edweek.org/info/about/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: High Schools; Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Maryland
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A