Below please find several websites to consult in regards to academic integration in primary education. These sites provide the foundation for our integration of tech in the classroom, as we learn and advance from these K-12 educational examples.
Garage Physics
Location: Madison, WI
Mission: “The Garage Physics lab in B613 Sterling Hall is a makerspace for student-driven interdisciplinary innovation. Garage offers all UW-Madison undergraduates and graduate students an unstructured safe environment to explore technologies such as 3d-printers and electronic devices and to develop creative ideas through project-oriented just-in-time learning. Garage supports research and development of product ideas by would-be entrepreneurs. Want to make something or make something happen? You have come to the right place. Invention is the mother of necessity. Physics student? This is a good place to explore and try stuff. Not a physics student but interested in getting you hands a bit dirty? Need a physics student to help you? Find one here.
Garage Physics is supported by the UW-Madison Department of Physics, the UW-Madison Physics Department Board of Visitors Fund for Undergraduate Research, the UW-Madison Kemper Knapp Bequest fund, Venturewell, and Gener8tor.”
Open Lab Collaborative Research
Mission:
“OpenLab is a Research Center at the University of California Santa Cruz founded by ProfessorsJennifer Parker and Enrico Rameriz-Ruiz. The Center targets complex education issues of national significance regarding the ability of art and science researchers to collaborate on research endeavors. The goal of the OpenLab is to help change the current status by providing shared research facilities and create a network for collaborative discourse fueled by academic communities, arts and science communities, and industry.
OpenLab has been pursuing the physical development of new collaborative laboratories as spaces to foster this research and establish networking system for faculty and students to create projects. Laboratories and studios in both the arts and the sciences are accessible to users in the OpenLab Network. Within this immersive environment, we conduct research to acquire skills and knowledge that crosses disciplinary boundaries between science, education, and the arts while sharing expertise in collaborative research methodologies.
OpenLab facilitates innovative, interdisciplinary and collaborative research with science, art, community, design, and engineering at UCSC.
Research questions include:
(1) How can we strengthen or create new methodologies that truly engage art and science thinking?
(2) Is an interdisciplinary laboratory space for cross-disciplinary and collaborative research more engaging and productive for students and faculty without these resources?”
Integrated Innovation Institute
Location:
Mission: “uniting engineering, design and business to cross train students to become elite innovators… enhancing the innovation process and generating impact.“
Location: Warrington College of Business Administration
Mission: “The Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI) was created to teach, coach and inspire students to be entrepreneurial in their lives. CEI provides students the tools and experiences necessary to creatively pursue new opportunities and innovations in the start-up, social, and corporate venture arenas.
Through courses, degree programs and complementary activities such as speakers and workshops, CEI currently serves more than 2,000 students per year. Partnering with other colleges at the University, CEI delivers introductory and specialized courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level, and offers every graduate student at the University of Florida the option to earn a graduate minor in entrepreneurship. In addition, the Jeff Gold Experiential Learning Laboratory—which houses the GatorNest program, theGator Hatchery student incubator and the IdeaGators Co-Working Space—provides students the opportunity to experience real life entrepreneurship while still in school. Co-curricular programs that include consulting to disadvantaged entrepreneurs in South Africa and Haiti, as well as the $40,000 Big Idea Competition, provide additional opportunities to “learn and do”, helping students create an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset.
In addition, CEI offers the nation’s most comprehensive specialized degree program focused on entrepreneurship, the Thomas S. Johnson Entrepreneurship Master’s Program.”
Location: One University Avenue, Lowell, MA 01854
Mission: “The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship offers students and faculty of all disciplines the opportunity to work together to develop innovative and entrepreneurial solutions to the major problems facing our community, the region and the world. The Center hosts several programs that encourage social innovation and entrepreneurship among UMass Lowell students, faculty and staff, as well as the broader community in which we live.
The goal of the Center is to aid the development of an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset among UMass Lowell students, faculty, graduates, and community members so they, in turn, can solve the very complex problems facing our community and society in this 21st century.”
Mission: “The Invention Studio is student-run design-build-play space open to all Georgia Tech students. It is staffed by the University Lab Instructors, student volunteers who are on hand to train you and help with your projects. Use of the studio is free for all students, faculty and staff of Georgia Tech, regardless of year, major, or prior experience.
To support and foster the demand for creative, self-initiated learning on the Georgia Tech campus, we create environments for students to make their ideas a reality by providing resources for designing, prototyping, and sharing ideas through workshops, vendor networks, experienced guidance, and access to cutting edge machines.”
Location: 711 E Boldt Way, Appleton, WI 54911
Mission: “The mission of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) interdisciplinary area is to enable students to further pursue their passion through innovative and entrepreneurial ventures in courses and co-curricular activities. It is important to note that we use the word “innovative” in a particular sense, referring to creative, original thinking that leads to new ideas, products, or services that create value for society. Similarly, we use “entrepreneurial” in a specific way, referring to taking initiative and creating positive change in the world. Finally, our use of the word “venture” includes both for-profit and non-profit ventures, and more broadly any initiative to deliver a product or service in a sustainable way.
Innovation and entrepreneurship, understood in this sense, fit naturally into a liberal education. The cultivation of innovative, entrepreneurial thought and action requires one to approach problems from multiple perspectives, to think creatively beyond the status quo, to create and deliver coherent, persuasive arguments. These are essential skills that a liberal education aims to impart to its recipients. The I&E program is one place among many where Lawrence’s curriculum attempts to develop the ability to create what did not exist before. I&E courses attempt to enhance the ability to generate new ideas or processes. Certainly other courses do this in other ways. Graduates who embrace innovative and entrepreneurial attitudes will be better equipped to create fulfilling lives for themselves — lives that extend their liberal arts experience.”
Location: Dwight Look College of Engineering
Mission: “Creativity is accelerated through a combination of imagination, ability, space, tools, and materials. It is enhanced by having a place where ideas can be tested, refined, and tested again as rapidly as possible. Having the right tools and materials readily available allows students to build amazing creations that expand the realms of possibility.
Welcome to the Engineering Innovation Center (EIC)! It is an open space where engineering students have access to state-of-the-art prototyping tools, equipment, material and support staff. Through partnerships with industry and non-profit sponsors, the EIC is an environment where concepts become solutions to real world problems and student teams come together to build new prototypes, acquire new skills, and develop new relationships. The Engineering Innovation Center is supported with Differential Tuition funds and it is open to engineering undergraduate students only.”
Location: Harper Theater
Mission: “The Chicago Innovation Exchange (CIE) is the University of Chicago’s new hub for multidisciplinary collaborations and support for business start-up activities by University faculty, students and area entrepreneurs.
The CIE will bring together the University’s distinctive strengths in research and resources from a network of world-class entrepreneurship programs to drive innovation in a range of areas, applying scientific discoveries to generate scalable solutions to difficult societal problems.”