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Young inventors create at Camp Invention
Students learned to invent during Camp Invention at Oakwood Elementary School in Oshkosh. Noell Dickmann/Oshkosh Northwestern Media
Mattox Lo, 8, rubbed his chin in thought before pointing out tiny lines inside the computer tower he'd just finished taking apart Thursday, June 18, at Oakwood Elementary School in Oshkosh.
"The capacitors get the power and lots of them connect to them, and they go all around the circuit board to give it power to give the computer its memory," he said, as he saw a few dust bunnies living where the fan inside the metal box had been.
Mattox was one of 55 students in kindergarten through seventh grade at Camp Invention this week. The week-long summer program, funded by the National Inventors Hall of Fame, is a camp for tinkerers to help them think outside the box, said Kim Loeper of Oshkosh, a science teacher at Cambria-Freisland Middle School who led the camp.
Heavy on science, technology, engineering and math, the students were learning about how inventions came to be — and finding they, too, could create something new, she said. Each day, they went through four rotations of classes.
The last class, I Can Invent: Next Level Gamers, was many of the students' favorite. During that class, they brought something old or broken from home to take apart and create a video game out of its components.
Loeper said it's really cool to see those "Aha!" moments happen during the class.
"They come in and they're so excited, and then they all hit a point of frustration," she said. "By the end of the week, they're so excited to show their parents their invention."
Students brought computers, CD players, VCRs, cameras, video game consoles and more, the insides of which lay sprawled across the tables and floor. Like surgeons, they opened up the electronics, all of them wearing clear goggles foggy with focus as they cut red and white wires, ripped out speakers and untwisted screws.
Adalyn Johnson, 9, took apart an antique radio she got specifically for that purpose.
"I got it at an antique store and it looked really interesting to me," she said, as a small speaker rolled around on the table.
The boys and girls shared tools — "Does anybody have a wire cutters?" — and dropped the items they didn't need into a "share box."
Colorful wires stuck out every which way from the stereo Mason Grahl, 12, had gutted. He counted 43 capacitors in the machine. He planned to create a video game with different levels out of its parts — a lava world, a metal world and a water world, he said.
"There's lots of wires and weird things in there ... a lot of capacitors, a lot of wires, a lot of buttons," he listed off.
Across the room, Gavin Juckem was excited as he shared how he overcame a barrier at last.
"I finally got this cover off," the 9-year-old said, holding up the top to a purple CD player triumphantly.
He pointed to the front of the machine, "There seems to be two red lights here."
Sam Johnson, 10, lent a helping hand, pointing to a panel.
"When this works, they light up the screen," he said.
In the other classes, like Kartwheel, they worked together to build a cart to take through an obstacle course. During Inducted, they learned about five Hall of Fame-inducted inventors, their inventions and how they came to be. Design Studio Illuminate had hands-on learning stations about circuits.
The students also learned about and received patent certificates for their inventions on Friday. Before Camp Invention ended, parents toured the inventions and heard from the students about how they came to be.
Reach Noell Dickmann: 920-426-6658 or firstname.lastname@example.org; on Twitter @ONW_Noell