Monday, March 10, 2008

A Post to the Mega-Blog: Can innovation be taught?

Our InvenTeam was recently asked to read an article and post our comments to a question posed by the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam Program. They asked, "Can innovation be taught?"

Head on over to the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam blog to check out our teams response as well as what other teams had to say.

Paying it Forward

Over the course of our project, our InvenTeam has been extremely fortunate to receive help and advice from professionals in many fields. These individuals have generously donated their time and expertise to benefit our project. The Garden Consultant would not nearly be what it is today without their help. Local inventor Bruce Hodge, of Tech Valley Technologies, spends nearly every Monday night with us at school until around nine at night. We are especially appreciative of his time and effort.

When we attended the presentation of the Lemelson-Rensselaer Prize Mrs. Dorothy Lemelson, wife of the late Jerome Lemelson, spoke of her philanthropic goals for the Lemelson Foundation. When the foundation was created, Mr. Lemelson's goal was to give back to the world by helping inventors. Through his and his wife's work, the Lemelson Foundation has fostered the inventive spirit by providing funds and support for inventors of all ages. We are so fortunate to be a part of this initiative, and wish to continue this trend of giving back what we have received.

In this light, we have decided that it is only right to give back. In a new team initiative, all members of the SSHS InvenTeam will participate in twice as many hours of community service as they have received in help from outside individuals. We are so excited to take part in these new opportunities, and so thankful for the help we have received so far!

Thanks!
Juliana

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Collaborating with the Great River InvenTeam

In our recent progress report review Mrs. Estabrooks noted some overlap in our work and the Great River, Minnesota Windamajig project. We have contacted them and are very excited to work with their team. Their advisor, Mr. Michael Flood, replied "You're an impressive team - we appreciate the invite!"

We have a great group of Saratoga's Engineering students that have begun working with Great River. We expect to have a presentation for them out by early next week. Stay tuned for more details!

Juliana

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

InvenTeamTV: Videos back online

Hey Everyone -

If you have not already noticed our newest add-on, scroll on down to the bottom of the page and check out InvenTeamTV brought to you by Vimeo.com. This cool new widget gives us an easily accessible and most importantly, a cool looking way to show off out teams latest videos.

We will soon be recording our latest presentation (which was given recently at RPI) and putting that up online for you all to check out as well.

We are sorry that we were unable to host our videos for a while. We were asked by representatives from the InvenTeam Program to take down the videos upon questions of image copyright infringement but we have asked permission of all images sources and all videos are ready to go back online.

Enjoy the videos, hopefully they can help you better understand the mission of our InvenTeam and the Garden Consultant, and thanks for your help and support.

- Elliott

Monday, March 3, 2008

InvenTeam Rocks!




For those of you who haven't already heard Brother Aside won Sunday nights Battle of the Bands at Northern Lights. InvenTeam members Jeff Pawlick (Keyboard and Electric Violin) and Mike Bogardus (Bass Guitar) played an awesome show helping their band to victory. They now get to open for a natioanly signed band of their choice in Chicago later this year and move on to the next round in the Battle of the Bands.

It was an awesome concert and the group of us that went down for the show had a great time. Obviously not only are our InvenTeam members smart students but they are also members of bands, sports teams, clubs, and tons of other activities. Nothing says well rounded like an engineer in a rock band.

Intro to Blogger Video: A Quick Guide to Posting and Commenting

For those of you that have been invited or wish to be invited, here is a quick tutorial on how to create posts and comment to our blog. This video explains the basics of Blogger and will have you posting in no time.

If you would like a "large screen" version feel free to e-mail me at elliott.poppel@gmail.com and I would be happy to get back to you. Also, if you are having trouble watching this on an Apple Computer I have a version to help with that issue too.

Thanks and Enjoy -

Elliott