This year, organizers plan to welcome over 220 students, teachers, mentors and special guests from three area schools to Inventionland for a day full of everything-inventing! Students from Franklin Regional Middle School, Seneca Valley School District’s Haine Middle School and Bethel Park School District’s Independence Middle School will unlock their creativity inside Inventionland at the Invention Convention.

Tomorrow’s event begins at 9 a.m. and lasts until 2 p.m. Similar to both of last year’s successful Invention Conventions, students in grades 6-8, who have been learning about the engineering design process, will compete in various inventing challenges.

This year, the inventing challenges include:

The Zip Line – where students design and build something that can carry a ping pong ball from the top of a zip line string to the bottom in four seconds or less.

The Invention Challenge– where students present an invention idea that they have been working on prior to coming to the Invention Convention. Tomorrow, students will pitch their invention ideas to our very own team of Inventionland Creationeers!

The Design Lives Here Invention Convention is based on the PBS show Design Squad Nation and is designed to inspire the inventors and engineers of tomorrow.

What better place to inspire young creators than our very own design facility and the largest invention factory in America, Inventionland?

We can’t wait to see and share what these aspiring inventors come up with!

Copyright Davison 2014

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Science, technology, engineering and math (S.T.E.M.) were at the forefront of the Invention Convention and these categories are spreading like wildfire in the minds of young kids across the country.

With the holidays right around the corner, GoldieBlox, a company that is devoted to building games for girls in the hopes of inspiring future engineers, is hitting the market at full force!

As you can see, the engineering world is predominately made up of men; GoldieBlox took this statistic and ran with it by dedicating their products to encouraging young girls to build and, as they say, “help to level the playing field in every sense of the phrase.” Additionally, GoldieBlox taps into a girl’s strong verbal skills and pairs their story with the construction sets, in an effort to boost confidence in spatial skills that, in turn, will give young inventors the tools that they need to build and create amazing things!

Speaking of amazing things, if you haven’t done so already, check out GoldieBlox’s viral video!

These three creative and inventive little girls on a mission to break the mold were also featured on Buzzfeed!

Copyright Davison 2013

Sources:

http://www.goldieblox.com/pages/about

Media:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFpe3Up9T_g

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It is nothing new for our creative design facility, Inventionland, to open its doors to welcome eager young minds to tour through on a regular basis. But, it is not everyday that 250 of those eager minds meet at Inventionland to explore their ideas and share them with our Creationeers.

However, that was exactly the case for the 2013 Invention Convention, which was held at Inventionland last Friday. The event, which was sponsored by WQED’s Design Lives Here, attracted middle school students from across the region, who competed in four different inventing activities.

Those four interactive activities included the Speedy Shelter, Zip Line, Paddle Power and Invention Challenge.

During the Invention Challenge, students teamed up and pitched their own invention ideas to our CEO and Founder, Mr. Davison, and our talented cast of Creationeers, including Executive Director of Design Nathan Field, John Margolis, Jason Rogge, Nikki Egleton and Sharon George.

Mr. Davison said the event was a huge success and just the beginning of a growing partnership with WQED.

“Our partnership with WQED in the development of S.T.E.M.(Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Curriculum and entertainment for our middle school children is one of our emerging initiatives. You will see our commitment grow in this area over the next few years. We have worked together for years now and the program and number of children participating is growing rapidly. It was a great convention in Inventionland, but it was difficult to pick the winner amongst all those hopeful kids. In the end, we selected one team but they all tried their best and did a great job… each and every one of them!” said Mr. Davison.

The Invention Convention was such a success that even KDKA was on the scene. The local CBS-affiliate covered the event for their Friday evening newscast.

Mr. Davison told KDKA’s Rick Dayton that “All this creativity is in these children… It’s just a matter of what we do to bring it out.”

You can also read KDKA’s story here. See more photos from the 2013 WQED Invention Convention below:

Copyright Davison 2013

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It’s time to get together for the sake of inventing! Inventionland is gearing up to host WQED’s Invention Convention 2013 – a day filled with invention challenges, advice from engineers and inventors and even an appearance by the cast of WGBH’s “Design Squad Nation.”

And, that’s not all. Students in grades 5-8 (and their families) are invited to the Saturday, April 6, 2013 event at Inventionland, where they can bring invention ideas, paper prototypes or models for review by Inventionland Creationeers. Students are even able to construct their own prototypes on-site.

Interested students can register for one of two sessions, which are slated from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. or from 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. Space is limited, so if you know a young, aspiring inventor, encourage them to attend (and to bring you, of course!)

Find out more about Invention Convention 2013 here.

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