New Thinkabit Lab Innovation Space brings hands-on learning to students

There's excitement from the community, there's excitement from our students and families. So today I have another challenge for my friends. The biggest thing is that kids have an opportunity to have this hands-on experience with technology. This new Think of It lab program for Virginia Tech at Bucknell Elementary here in Fairfax County's Region 3 is really pretty exciting for us. We have had many partners and collaborators since we first came to be about 10 years ago but this is one of the coolest. It was just an exciting opportunity. We have a STEAM space already at our school and so it's been pretty cool to see it transform. They could do anything from 3D printing to working with microcontrollers, coding, hands-on engineering design challenges. They'll learn a lot about team building, resilience, being global thinkers, communicators. I'm excited to teach them what the difference is between invention and innovation. They are primarily going to go through the engineering and design process here so they'll get an opportunity to make mistakes, understand how to use failure and mistakes to progress whatever they were trying to make their goal. Helping our students to learn how to think critically, how to be creative, to give them just opportunities thinking about robotics and to all the other types of opportunities they'll have means a lot to me because I think it will prepare them for jobs that we can't even name. Physical computing will probably be at the core of any hands-on technical job in the future. All of the things that we teach will be important. Why are we doing this the kids and who is involved all of us and so there's such great power in that Seeing what we could do to help the future, the new generation that's to come, and understanding how technology is such a big part, inventing innovation, and just allowing them to see that it is possible.