A Peek in the Life of Innovation Lab

Thanks to WBTV engineering department for donating some old technology that has captivated the students for days now.

Adjacent to the media center lies Piedmont's new innovation lab. What goes on in an innovation lab? Showing might be easier than telling:
Below are just a few shots of the action in the lab this year. Hover over to view captions.

rigging a slow mo video

First minutes with the new old video camera

Beanie Baby Balance Board

Girls Who Game videoconference with a Dell exec

iPad filters while hairbraiding

Saidou records his podcast

all the kinetic toys at once

6th and 7th grade hooking up equipment

One taking apart, one putting together

laptop guts

Got it working with no instructions

Not pictured: The victory lap Brendan took when he firgured out how to hook up the ancient montor, video camera, and player.

Students visit during lunch, healthy kids, compacting and online time to work alone and together; to create and dissassemble; to relax and study. Yesterday in the lab, in addition to online classwork, scheduling foreign language speaking tests, and preparing schoolwork, students worked on diy projects, took apart old lapop, formed a "coconut" (nearly completely round smooth ball of kinetic sand), colored tape with sharpies to make a blacklight attachment for their phones then researched what glows in black light and why (they'd thought it was germs, but its phosphorus), braided hair, took photos, filmed video on iPad and vintage TV cameras, and video conferenced with a Dell executive.

Panorama of some of the innovation lab regulars as they relax and explore

View this post on Instagram

I’m saying “This is the best innovation ever! Jamari is gonna be world famous.” #PiedmontIB #Innovation #Makerspace #ibschool

A post shared by Lisa Gurthie (@earthiegurthie) on Dec 13, 2019 at 8:48am PST

If you want to watch and learn from Jamari,  he advised a fellow student to "be one with the chair" 
And here's a student's iPad recording of the action with me tweeting the genius innovation as it occurs.