Kent City — Is America’s next big invention the Beginner Mallet, a dual-headed mallet with an easy grip to help people learn to play percussion?
Or what about the Robot Pencil, a voice-activated pencil that does all the writing for you, so that your hand doesn’t get cramped?
Perhaps consumers would be interested in the Wall-Efold, a device that takes your unfolded laundry and leaves you with a pile of neatly folded clothes?
Kent City Middle School eighth-graders came up with all of these inventions and more as part of their history unit on the American Industrial Revolution. After learning about 1800s-era inventions like the cotton gin, steam engines and railroads, teacher Giselle Tauriainen asked her students to try their hands at being inventors.
The assignment? Create something that could make a person’s day go smoother or improve any part of their waking hours.
“I tell them: You’re part of a new industrial revolution in this class; what’s something that you want to create?” Tauriainen said. “From the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, think about your routine and what could be better, like sleeping in longer or brushing your teeth better.
“Since we’ve been learning about things like factories and assembly lines, think about the process of creating your own invention and see what you can come up with.”
The creation process also involved determining the unit price, building a prototype (if possible), creating a slide show or video, and designing a poster detailing the invention to potential investors. Students then got to present their inventions in a “Shark Tank”-like pitch to their classmates, who asked questions and evaluated if the product was worth an investment.
‘Something no one’s ever thought of’
Eighth-grader Audra Niemi came up with a smart mirror she dubbed the Reflect360. This multifunctional device would be mounted in the bathroom, she said, to offer weather forecasts and news reports as a person is getting ready in the morning. Its most important function, though, is a hologram projection where the user could see what a certain outfit or hairstyle would look like on their body.
“I was thinking about what I would want, and a mirror that could project an outfit on me based on what’s in my closet would be, like, so amazing,” Audra said. “There’s a lot of things that give you outfit ideas, but none of them exactly match what you have.”
Jackson Bopp, Darrin White and Levi Neely went in a slightly different direction for their group invention. With Darrin wearing an inflatable shark costume, the trio pitched the idea of shark spray, a product that would “protect your dog from being attacked by a shark.”
“I personally think sharks are scary and I think they should be dealt with in a proper manner,” said Jackson, who added his group intentionally played up humor in their presentation to make their product more memorable.
“If people think about their favorite presentation, hopefully they’ll think of us first,” Jackson said. “So that would get them thinking about our product more and make them want to invest.”
Both Audra and Jackson said the project gave them better insight into the big cultural changes that were happening during the Industrial Revolution.
“They were making all these new technologies and devices that none of them had ever seen,” Audra said. “I imagine that people back then would think all the new stuff was so crazy, so unimaginable. So that’s what we tried to do with our new inventions, too.”
Added Jackson: “(Our presentation) made me kind of think more about how marketing worked back then, like, trying to find a reasonable price for something no one’s ever thought of before. We had to think of what (shark spray) would cost and then sell it.”
Tauriainen said the best part of a project like this is being able to give her students free rein over the creative process from start to finish.
“They’ve all been really into it and asking good questions,” the teacher said. “Sometimes they think about themselves, and sometimes they really think about other people — like, one invention was an automatic shoe-tier, with the idea coming from thinking about people with disabilities who can’t tie their shoes. … It’s really cool to see which direction they take it.”
Read more from Kent City:
• Eighth-graders simulate fates of pioneers along the Oregon Trail
• ‘My goal for you is just to get better’
