Leveraging a series of hands-on, open-ended invention challenges and inquiry-based facilitation, educator participants will learn how the Spark!Lab aims to develop soft skills such as curiosity, empathy, and creative problem-solving. The Inventive Identity Facilitation Toolkit is a set of ten strategies to engage visitors or students in exploring and shifting identities to practice characteristics used by inventors. Together, we’ll consider applications of inventive habits of mind in interdisciplinary contexts and demonstrate how conferring the language of identity, creating a welcoming environment, observing learners before facilitating, enhancing the experience through challenges, and more, will impact learners’ self-perceptions as creative problem-solvers of the future.
Callie Howard, Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, National Museum of American History
Lily Hsu-McCausland, Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, National Museum of American History
Leo Mullen, Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, National Museum of American History
Nyssa Buning, Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, National Museum of American History
