Episode 602: The Rise of Student Innovation: Teaching Students to Design and Protect Their Original Works

Want to encourage student innovation? Foster the spirit of invention! Join us in conversation with Scott Frank, Roxanne Moore, and Julia Varnedoe to learn more about student invention and intellectual property's role in protecting student ideas.

TRANSCRIPT

 

Ashley Mengwasser: Educators, hello. It's a new week and a new episode. I'm Ashley Mengwasser and this is Classroom Conversations, the platform for Georgia's teachers. Our podcast series is a co-creation of Georgia Department of Education and GPB, Georgia Public Broadcasting. Today's episode is about those student aha moments, inspired solutions and original creations that are remarkable but you're not really sure what to do with. We're talking about student inventions and intellectual property. Yes, K-12 students are honest inventors, less fettered by certain innovation killing threats adults face, call them self-doubt or bridled imaginations. A student's solution to a problem may not be patently obvious, but it could be obviously patentable as valuable intellectual property. Today we're handing you the blueprints to teach student invention in the classroom and promote awareness of intellectual property, complements of two organizations working in support of K-12 innovation in Georgia. What you learn today will expand your teaching methods in true head explosion emoji fashion. Naturally, I booked two Roxanne to explain this inventions and patents business. Roxanne Moore is principal engineer at Georgia Tech, as well as the co-founder and former director of Georgia Tech's K-12 InVenture Prize, an invention competition open to students and teachers statewide. The K-12 InVenture Prize is one of the programs we'll explore today. The second is the Georgia Intellectual Property Alliance, or GIPA, GIPA's, president and board chair, Scott Frank is here. Scott also serves as president and chair of the US IP Alliance and the Global IP Alliance, who knew there were so many IP alliances, and he's president and CEO of AT&T Intellectual property. In the spirit of this episode I decided to innovate and accommodate what might be our first, third guest. If you're following on this series, to get a teacher's perspective on this, we welcome Julia Varnedoe, a teacher veteran of the K-12 InVenture Prize. Julia is a gifted education specialist at Sope Creek Elementary, which is in Cobb County School District. Hi, Roxanne, Scott and Julia.

Roxanne Moore: Hello, Ashley.

Julia Varnedoe: Hello.

Scott Frank: Good to see you, Ashley. Thanks for having us.

Ashley Mengwasser: In unison. Good to see you. How's everyone today?

Roxanne Moore: I'm good.

Ashley Mengwasser: You're good, Roxanne?

Roxanne Moore: I survived Halloween.

Ashley Mengwasser: You did. You did too, Julia.

Julia Varnedoe: I survived post-Halloween.

Ashley Mengwasser: Exactly. And Scott, you're just a survivor in general.

Scott Frank: I survived the traffic to get here.

Ashley Mengwasser: That all counts for something. Two engineers and a teacher walk into a bar, I wonder how that joke would end.

Julia Varnedoe: Poorly.

Ashley Mengwasser: Oh. Or with extra homework. It's hard to say. Well, let's start with organizational missions, if you will. I want to talk about the K-12 InVenture Prize first and then talk a little bit about GIPA. So tell us what is the mission of the K-12 InVenture Prize, Roxanne?

Roxanne Moore: Well, the goal of the K-12 InVenture Prize is to cultivate the next generation of engineers and entrepreneurs by making invention education accessible to all students and teachers in Georgia.

Ashley Mengwasser: And you do that by way of an invention competition?

Roxanne Moore: We do, among other things. So beyond our competition offerings, which include amazing pre-competition opportunities like mock pitch where students can get judgment-free judgment, if you will, get judges' feedback but it doesn't count on your competition score. And then we have amazing regional partners who offer regional competitions and then our state finals competition, which is offered every march at Georgia Tech annually.

Ashley Mengwasser: Fabulous. And we'll get into the hows and whys of this as we go on. And what about the Georgia Intellectual Property Alliance, Scott, what's your mission?

Scott Frank: GIPA's mission is to help every single citizen in the state of Georgia with intellectual property. And we think of three groups generally, creators, protectors and enablers. And believe it or not, most citizens can be many of those. And then we do it really three different ways. One, we are really working hard to raise awareness and educate on intellectual property because it can feel very complicated and can be very hard for a lot of people. So we're trying to help them that way. We're also trying to facilitate a collaborative IP ecosystem, so trying to get the creators, protectors, enablers to work together more efficiently and effectively get ideas from their heads into people's hands as fast as possible. And the third area is really around diversity and inclusion, and we're simply trying to help include everybody, especially the underrepresented people.

Ashley Mengwasser: Absolutely. And one of your committees in GIPA is focused on teachers and students education. Right?

Scott Frank: Definitely. That's a priority. And we're so excited to talk to your audience today.

Ashley Mengwasser: That's why you're here today. I'd love a summary of your professional paths Up to this point, how did you land in these seemingly niche roles and inventions and intellectual property? You first Roxanne.

Roxanne Moore: Totally by accident.

Ashley Mengwasser: Perfect.

Roxanne Moore: I get a PhD in mechanical engineering. I go work at a bakery making custom cakes. Then I get a postdoc and then some professor comes to me and is like, "Hey, you should do this K-12 thing because I'm already doing the Georgia Tech InVenture Prize and I just got this little bit of money from this foundation and you do K-12, like here you do something with it." So really it was handed to me. And then I met an amazing teacher named Amanda Baskett who I collaborated with to get the first high school InVenture Prize competition off the ground. And she had already done a lot of the legwork developing our first curriculum. And after our very first competition, which had 10 teams at our state finals, some teachers from Cobb County, I think one of them might've been Julia, in fact, called me up and said, "Can we do this with our fifth graders?" And I have a heart so I can't say no to fifth graders. And so next thing you knew, we had elementary students and high school students and then it just cascaded out of control from there.

Ashley Mengwasser: That's the K-12 InVenture Prize. Here on the early end in elementary is Julia. Why did you first choose to teach the K-12 InVenture Prize and why do you continue, Julia?

Julia Varnedoe: That is a great question. Part of our goal is really to teach kids how to think. Everybody can memorize information and the world is literally in their pockets at this point on their phones. But teaching them how to think through a problem is really difficult. And this curriculum does that. It has authentic learning. It's real world experience. They're able to connect and really grow and it gives them a voice. So that's why I got hooked on it and I can't quit it.

Ashley Mengwasser: You're addicted to invention education.

Julia Varnedoe: I love it. I love seeing what it does and how it transforms the student.

Ashley Mengwasser: Absolutely. And we are going to talk about that. Thanks, Julia. Scott, what was your professional path to intellectual property? So high brow.

Scott Frank: I will say, I think I've always been a child at heart, always been curious and never been afraid to try different things. I went to Georgia Tech to be an engineer and didn't want to be an engineer. But I was curious about it. And then maybe I'll get my master's in business, maybe I'll manage engineers. And partially through that, I don't think I want to manage engineers. I was working with them. I'm curious about something. Started doing law school and interestingly, I found something I liked. And that's what I encourage children, try things and find something you like. But I found patent law, that engineers can actually be patent agents. It's one area of law you can practice without being a lawyer. And so I was immediately able to practice patent law shortly out of Georgia Tech while I was in law school and getting my MBA. And that led to me being an IP lawyer, which I also liked. And then one day I was asked to run the subsidiary of Intellectual Property for Bell South, which then got bought by AT&T. So that's how I got my professional career. As far as GIPA goes, it was the recognition that there was a lot of people with great ideas and they didn't know what to do with them. And I felt like it was such a great opportunity to tell people and to teach people. And there are so many other people who have the knowledge to help and there are so many people who we've been helping and it just builds on itself.

Ashley Mengwasser: Absolutely. Have any of you actually invented something or have plans to invent something in your own right?

Roxanne Moore: I kind of invent odd things, I guess. When I was doing cakes, I mentioned I worked in a bakery in my stop between PhD and where I am now, one of my stops I guess, I was inventing new techniques. So I ended up making custom molds to make edible gum paste stilettos.

Ashley Mengwasser: What? Excuse me.

Roxanne Moore: Yeah, it was a whole thing. I actually taught courses on it.

Ashley Mengwasser: Do you still do those?

Roxanne Moore: Not often. They're really time-consuming and I have two children, but-

Ashley Mengwasser: By request only. Got it.

Roxanne Moore: Totally. But I've made some really cool ones. And at that time a lot of the edible shoes weren't very realistic. They were very whimsical elf like things I would not wear personally as a shoe fanatic. So I made versions of things that I would wear. And to do that I had to create custom molds and custom templates to create the shapes that I was going for. And at that time I was able to then turn that into teaching classes. And I actually kind of got bit by this because there is really no intellectual property to protect there once you start putting things out there. And so other more famous people started co-opting what I was doing and teaching it and then I was really out of luck. So I got a good intellectual property lesson early on. But I do write some songs, I actually have a couple copyrights and-

Ashley Mengwasser: Okay. That's a type of intellectual properties.

Roxanne Moore: Have a patent someday too.

Ashley Mengwasser: Yes, you will. You will, Roxanne. Julia, what about you?

Julia Varnedoe: I love to tinker. Roxanne knows that. Give me some cardboard and some glue and I'm in heaven. I got involved during COVID designing masks with filters when there were no masks and used, I don't know if this is right or not, but we used shopping bags for the filters made out of polypropylene. And I was able to connect with a student at Georgia Tech who was doing research at the time while the school was all boarded up. I would bring him a bag of masks and he would test them. He would test the particles in them. So I guess you could say I was part of that invention process too.

Ashley Mengwasser: Absolutely.

Julia Varnedoe: And I did invent, this is really random, but a way to get the condensation from the air conditioner in my attic to water my plants in my window boxes. I thought that was pretty cool.

Ashley Mengwasser: Gaia loves this. Yes, mother Nature is really into that one. Very creative. Scott, you're a patent guy, I imagine there's a few under your belt.

Scott Frank: I'm an engineer and I work for a-

Ashley Mengwasser: Scott, you're a patent guy. I imagine there's a few under your belt.

Scott Frank: I'm an engineer and I work for a telecom company, so I actually... I got to be a good role model, so I actually have dozens of patents with AT&T. I'll tell you the one, I was actually thinking about this, the one I'm most proud of is probably will surprise you, it's a real estate investment calculator.

Ashley Mengwasser: Oh.

Scott Frank: I did it on the side and somehow we got a patent on it. And it just goes to show you kids, and teachers, you can patent almost anything.

Ashley Mengwasser: Amen. I love that. It won't surprise you that I had a wealth of ideas that never went anywhere, but my favorite was the Find-O-Matic, which I invented in elementary school. We had a lesson I remember, even that long ago, decades back, hey, kids come up with something that would make your life better. What would that be? And I was like the Find-O-Matic. Clearly, I was a kid who had a problem with misplacing things. That unfortunately has persisted into adulthood. But I didn't have the science, or the persistence, or the knowledge of the engineering design process, things you teach in K-12 and InVenture Prize, or that my ideas could be valuable if I could actually get them out of my head and into hands and those sorts of things. I love that we're going to be teaching people this today because this is so special to my own heart. If you peel back all these layers of innovation and professional accolades, I want to understand your essence as individuals because underneath all of this, we're still people. So tell me about your life and hobbies.

Scott Frank: I will say I've got a pretty busy schedule with my family. I am married and I have four biological children. I have two other children that we've adopted, so I've got a lot of children's activities and family things to keep me busy. The other thing is I do enjoy to get out there in the golf course. I love swinging the club, but even more, I like being with people. I like Mother Nature and even the competitive spirit. When I get some spare time, I try to hit the golf ball.

Ashley Mengwasser: For sporting. That's great, Scott. Julia, any hobbies in your world?

Julia Varnedoe: I have so many hobbies. I'm never bored. I love just to make things. I've got four sewing machines, actually, maybe five, which is really kind of shameful. But yeah, I do. I like to make things with my sewing machines. I like to embroider, I like to do things like that. I love to garden. Anything where I can create something. I'm not so good on the cake baking, Roxanne. That's a little bit of a different skill because it involves some chemistry that I'm not so good at, but anything like that I love. I'm married, I have three children, they're all off the payroll and out of the house, so it does give me a little bit more time to do things that I really love, including working with my students and really getting them going with their inventions.

Ashley Mengwasser: You're here. And Roxanne, we already know about your proclivities with cakes. Thank you very much. Could you take us through some of your music interests?

Roxanne Moore: Well, I actually trained as a percussionist alongside getting my mechanical engineering degree when I was an undergrad, so I've been serious about music for a long time. It's funny, there's not too many gigs for concert marimbas, as it turns out. It's not so common. So actually during the pandemic, I really found my way back to the piano, which was my first instrument, and I finally, a few years ago, took my first voice lesson and embraced the fact that I actually really love to sing. I've been doing a lot more piano and voice lately, which is part of what led me to start writing songs as well. It's a fun new chapter.

Ashley Mengwasser: I love the treasure of finding a post by you featuring music. I didn't know this about you. I said, what... Is Roxanne singing? It feels like an elf in the movie Elf where he's just walking around singing. I'm like, I didn't know she does this. It was fascinating. And you love it.

Roxanne Moore: I love it.

Ashley Mengwasser: You love it.

Roxanne Moore: I always have.

Ashley Mengwasser: Yes. And you have children yourself?

Roxanne Moore: I do. They are five and eight. They're very inventive. In fact, my son made his own Halloween costume out of cardboard boxes. My living room is full of cardboard boxes.

Ashley Mengwasser: I'd expect nothing less.

Roxanne Moore: And all kinds of cardboard box tools. And there's like randomly wood glue on the coffee table and you're like, what are you doing? I give them all the sharp things. They use heavy kitchen shears. They're very safe about it, but there's just constant construction going on in my house.

Ashley Mengwasser: Yeah, it's an inventor engineer's house up in there. Absolutely. I brought you here, the real reason we're all here is to talk about student inventions and intellectual property. Let's begin with student inventions. Roxanne, what does Tex Competition, the K-12 InVenture Prize have to offer our K through 12 teachers and students in Georgia?

Roxanne Moore: Honestly, every year when I get to see these inventors at state finals, and granted that's only a very small percentage of the inventors working in their classrooms that I don't want to overlook, but I get to see a sampling of them when they come to Georgia Tech. And every year I'm like, this is the most inspiring thing I do all year because these students are altruistic, they're inventive, they're generous, they're smart, and they're fired up. They're so enthusiastic to teach others about what it is they're trying to solve and why they're trying to solve it. And they care about the environment. They care about doing right by people. It's just like, how do I get more of this? How do we get more of this into our lives? In school, that's so scripted. I say this also as a... I teach at Georgia Tech, right? I've taught mechanical engineering, design courses even, and it's just like school gets so scripted, how do we get them off script, and realizing that's a skill and it can be taught.

Ashley Mengwasser: Yes.

Roxanne Moore: It's not just something that we're like, oh, by the way, your capstone project, oh by the way, your science fair project, or whatever it is, like, oh, now go be creative. You can't not teach those inventive and creative skills and then expect them to just be there randomly. That's part of what the K-12 InVenture is doing, is giving you skills and habits that you can practice, like a musician, like a composer, whatever it is that you're doing, so that you can actually pull those out when the time is right.

Ashley Mengwasser: And giving you, the teacher, the resources to kick that off. This is where I want to hear from, Julia. Does this program, Julia, K-12 InVenture Prize, does it need to exist in the classroom setting as a group club outside of school? What is a way you recommend as a gifted teacher?

Julia Varnedoe: You can do it any way you want. I am very lucky that I have my students for the whole day, so I have an entire day that I can go really deep with some of the things that we're teaching, but a lot of teachers don't have that time. Some teachers only have them for one hour a day or a 45-minute segment, so there's a lot of ways that you can do that education. You can do it embedded into the curriculum, like your reading curriculum or your math curriculum even, or some of your science. You can do it as an after school club. You can do it as a camp. We've done all these things with Georgia Tech. You can do a light version where you give them the problem where they're not trying to find the problem, because that does take a while. There's a lot of different ways that teachers that I've met have actually integrated this successfully in their classrooms.

Ashley Mengwasser: What skills are being taught through the K-12 InVenture Prize? Can we just list some? I know engineering design process, being iterative, empathy, what are some other skills?

Julia Varnedoe: Those are the big ones, really, because the empathy goes to the user experience and what the user needs. As Roxanne was saying, our kids are just naturally empathetic and it's so refreshing to see that because they care so much about our world and solving problems. When you start to tap into that, it's just amazing. You've got that, you've got the problem solving, and you've got the failure. They need to learn that failure is good. It helps you to get to that next step where you're going to be improving what you thought was good. And so, I think those are the big ones. Obviously, the process is iterative and it's not linear. That's a little hard for them sometimes.

Ashley Mengwasser: Yes. It's hard for adults, to be honest with you.

Julia Varnedoe: But they learn how to do that and they learn how to be really excited about that process.

Ashley Mengwasser: The just keep going. Just keep part of it. Absolutely. Scott, for GIPA, relatively new to the scene, but when we're talking about intellectual property and your mission to bring awareness to intellectual property, what is your short range goal for teachers listening? What would you like them to do in terms of intellectual property?

Scott Frank: First, recognize that every single student has an idea and every teacher has an idea. You don't have to protect it with a patent. You can protect... There's multiple ways of protecting with intellectual property, but the goal here is to take your idea and to try to make something of it, and ultimately to help people with it. The thing about it is if you don't protect it, you can still help people, but if you protect it with intellectual property, you actually can control it and you can make sure that whatever is done with it is what you want done with it. And guess what? If you want to make some money from it, you can make some money from it too.

Ashley Mengwasser: That's possible too. And you were telling me that the goal for GIPA right now is really to get into schools. Tell me how and for what.

Scott Frank: We're taking two paths. The obvious path to most people would be to work with the school leaders, the superintendents and principals-

Ashley Mengwasser: Administrators.

Scott Frank: ... administrators, and try to get into the curriculum. Well, I'll just say that's easier said than done, but it is a goal. While we're working on that goal, we are also working with the great people, like Roxanne and Julia, to get it into classrooms through these technology and science fairs.

The good news is these teachers and students are probably some of the most serious and excited about intellectual property to begin with.

Ashley Mengwasser: Absolutely.

Scott Frank: So you got kind of a captive audience, and it's just a matter of giving them the materials, giving them the assistance, and they're just drinking it up. It's amazing. The big thing is the channel that Roxanne and Julia create, that they actually give us access to the teachers and the students.

Ashley Mengwasser: Absolutely. And your website, GIPA's website, and the other IP Alliances point to curriculum teachers can use as well, that's available to them. And I know, Scott, you mentioned to me, you just want to get into schools and tell teachers about intellectual property, to expose them to this, which would be step one, right?

Scott Frank: That's right. And if you come to the Georgia IP Alliance website, we have a lot of curriculum that we have on there. There's also the US IP Alliance with the US Patent and Trademark Office has put together a bunch of curriculum and they are on our website. There are so much resources that are out there. By the way, if you have a question, something doesn't make sense, just contact us. We will be happy to assist.

Ashley Mengwasser: Yes, contact GIPA. Okay. Julia, one key to invention is creativity. We talked about that a little bit. In the case of children, their thinking is naturally boundless, isn't it?

Julia Varnedoe: It is.

Ashley Mengwasser: So what advantages do your school-age inventors have to begin with that you've noticed?

Julia Varnedoe: I'm going to go back to empathy again, because they just have a natural sense of empathy and they are not as jaded maybe as we are as adults, of thinking that they can't do something. When working with them, they're a little bit more malleable.

Julia Varnedoe: When working with them, they're a little bit more malleable in terms of the possibilities of what they can do, and they're excited. This curriculum breaks down barriers. It breaks down perfectionist kids who just want that right answer-

Ashley Mengwasser: The first time.

Julia Varnedoe: And they're getting a rash because you're asking them to think about something that they couldn't study for. It breaks down barriers demographically. It breaks down a lot of girls versus boy inventors. It just breaks down so many things and puts everybody on a level playing field where they can do something that they're really proud of.

Ashley Mengwasser: Would you tell us, Roxanne and Julia, some of the inventions that you've seen developed through the K-12 InVenture Prize that stood out to you?

Roxanne Moore: Oh my gosh, there are so many.

Julia Varnedoe: There are so many.

Roxanne Moore: There are some that break your heart and there are some that lift your heart up. So the ones that break my heart, unfortunately, popped into my mind first. But we've had a couple really strong inventions around mitigating school shootings, which shouldn't be kids' problems to solve.

Ashley Mengwasser: But you can tell it's a preoccupation for them.

Roxanne Moore: But it tends to come up pretty much every competition. There's actually a really great team called Door Bully that's working on a lock system. They have a manual version and I think a Bluetooth enabled version, and they did really well at nationals last year so that classrooms can be secured and they can have some better data about where the problems are in the school to be able to mitigate that situation. So that was a recent one that I was really impressed by. On the lighter side, we had one recently called Corder, which is supposed to be a better version of a recorder, only it's not a recorder at all. So in music class, we all took the recorder and played it poorly, and even if we played it well, it still only sounded mildly bad. So their thought was, "Wouldn't it be more useful to play something that could actually play chord progressions and then you could sing along to it?" And so they invented this simple stringed instrument with simple progressions that you could sing along to. And so their pitch was actually a song that they sang at nationals. I saw them sing this year. We really get a full spectrum of inventions. I'm sure Julia has more, too, that she can think of.

Julia Varnedoe: Yeah, I think one of my favorite inventions was the concussion sensor. These are my students, of course, and the fire apron, which I thought was really incredible because-

Ashley Mengwasser: Fire prawn.

Julia Varnedoe: Yeah, in her research, she found that the USDA is cultivating cotton that doesn't catch on fire. And so she was able to take that and merge that with her idea, and it was really cool. There's one that always I love to show my students, that is the handicap shaming, where if you park in the handicap spot, it's called Scandicap, that a light goes off and shames you. You're not supposed to be in this spot. And I love that because the kids who invented that, her sister is handicapped, and she's had this real life experience of going to the store and not being able to get her sister out of the car because somebody is parked there. So you see everything. When we were at nationals, there was a chair that fit over another chair. It's hard to describe, but it was like a dining room chair, and it was a way to stack your dining room chairs so that you-

Ashley Mengwasser: Oh, thank goodness

Julia Varnedoe: You couldn't even tell. And they won at nationals, along with Corder. There are just so many things that kids are thinking about, and it's really exciting to see what's on their mind.

Ashley Mengwasser: That started with an idea and it became a design and a prototype and an invention. And given the demands on teacher's time, Julia, how feasible is it to add something like K-12 InVenture Prize to their list?

Julia Varnedoe: Great question. None of us have enough time. There's no teacher ever said, "I don't know what to do with my time." So I do think that you need to work smart, so work with a partner, work with someone who can help you plan, work with us, reach out to us at K-12 InVenture or mentor teachers because we'll help you figure out how you can do that in a time sensitive way. The curriculum that is on the website for K-12 InVenture, it's all laid out there, so there's no real work needing to be done on that. If anything, you would have to edit it and pare it down for what you're looking to do in your classroom. So that's a really good way to save some of that time. But when you see your kids so excited every day to come in and they'll say, "Ms. Varnedoe, what are we making today?" And I'm like, "Well, we're researching today. We're not making today, but next week, we're going to be making..." It's great. And to have parents emailing you, telling you how excited their kids are to come and them messaging us and saying, "Oh, I got this great idea. I'm into birds. And I interviewed an exotic bird veterinarian to help me with problem finding, and I found a problem for them." And so it's really cool to see how it brings the world into them and that they are able to do something important with it.

Ashley Mengwasser: Yes, it brings the world into them, but it also puts them in the world, which I think is fantastic. You see that bridge between students and their communities established as a result of this program. Scott, you've heard about some brilliant ideas and inventions that have been designed over there. Help us with the intellectual property piece of this. At what point during these students process does intellectual property happen? When does it go from idea to a reality?

Scott Frank: Interestingly, the moment a student puts it on a piece of paper or puts it in any form of expression, it becomes intellectual property.

Ashley Mengwasser: Wow.

Scott Frank: One of the things that I think is shocking to people is that you actually get a copyright immediately the moment you put it in any tangible form of expression. So if someone tries to copy it, they can stop them.

Ashley Mengwasser: Wow.

Scott Frank: The other types of intellectual property that can kick in is if they keep it secret. And I encourage people to keep their intellectual property, their ideas, secret, unless you just want everybody to copy it and use it. But if you really want to have control of it, try to keep it secret. It's called proprietary information when you do that. A lot of times you will see someone wants to share it, they will make you sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Ashley Mengwasser: NDA.

Scott Frank: An NDA. And that's the way that you can share it, but it still confirms that it's your idea.

Ashley Mengwasser: You have ownership.

Scott Frank: You own the intellectual property. And then again, if you want to get a patent on it, that's the next big thing. It's usually pretty expensive. So I can tell you a lot of students and a lot of small companies, entrepreneurs don't have the money. I will tell you, the Georgia IP Alliance, we're proud and we have been giving free patent searches and patent applications to the student winners for many years. And if you think it's great, tell an investor, get some support. But that's how you get the ultimate protection of something generally is with a patent. And I will tell you the last part of it is if you've got a great idea for a name of your idea, that's the trademark. And you actually do have to spend a little bit of money on that, but it's not that expensive. It's amazing how many times a name is the reason that the idea-

Ashley Mengwasser: Make or break.

Scott Frank: Make or break it, exactly.

Ashley Mengwasser: Absolutely. So you went over several different ways to protect IP there. You mentioned patents. I heard copyrights. What are the others?

Scott Frank: Proprietary information and trademarks.

Ashley Mengwasser: Okay. Is proprietary information like trade secrets?

Scott Frank: They're pretty much synonymous.

Ashley Mengwasser: Okay, yes, I've heard that phrase before. I guess we're establishing here that the intellectual property of young school-aged students could have value, and they need to find out.

Scott Frank: It's amazing to me how many students are actually incredibly intelligent, have incredible ideas, and from their empathy and they're just wanting to make the world a better place, they have great ideas. They just don't really know what to do. And it's great that we have teachers like Julia and Roxanne that take these ideas and take it to the next level. But there's so many ways that students can help make the world a better place. And it's just, again, raising awareness how you do it.

Ashley Mengwasser: Yeah. Find the problem, come up with a solution and make sure you protect your idea. Roxanne, does protecting student intellectual property factor into Tech's K-12 InVenture Prize process at all? And if so, where? Where does that come up?

Roxanne Moore: Yeah, I'll have Julia speak to more where it falls in the curriculum, but it's absolutely a big part of what we're thinking. Scott started hinting at this, but there's a lot of disparities in who gets to be an inventor in America. And so part of what we're thinking is how do we encourage more students to be inventive earlier and more often, and how do we teach them to be inventive so that more students are coming to the table with ideas that are patentable? And so whether they're at their first job when they get that patent, or they have friend or family, or they get a free patent from us, or eventually they can afford one, whatever, but if you're not thinking, "I'm an inventor," then you're not going to invest in patenting it. And if you don't think your ideas are good, you're not going to try to find the money to get across that finish line. So we're focused more on that front end of how do we convince you that your ideas are valuable?

Ashley Mengwasser: And worth pursuing.

Roxanne Moore: Absolutely. And then we hope that more people will find their way to that patent pipeline. And we certainly make that clear, that's part of the journey. And maybe Julia can add on to how we address that in the curriculum.

Julia Varnedoe: We teach them how to do a patent search, very basic, but it's difficult because there's a lot in there when you start digging in. But one of the things when Scott was talking, I was thinking about is we ask our students to do a logbook and they save everything, every torn sheet of paper, every scrap they have, they put it in there to document their invention process. And I feel like that goes really well with what you're talking about in terms of improving ownership if you were to get there. But the logbook is a really important piece for our older students. It's more where they can really take that and add some research to it and do things like that at the high school level. For our younger students, it's got their sketches, it's got pictures of their prototypes, it's got that whole process. They started with one thing, they ended up with another, and this is how they got there. So it draws that line.

Ashley Mengwasser: It's a portfolio of sorts of their engineering process. And I know, Roxanne, I have a lot of connection with you in the K-12 InVenture Prize because I get to co-host the Georgia Tech InVenture Prize at the collegiate level. But I know that part of the InVenture Prize competition in both forms is patent assistance. That comes into it later on. So when might patent assistance come up for a competitor?

Roxanne Moore: So normally the formal patent assistance that is offered through GIPA, that comes after state finals. And often, they'll do a full prior art search and figure out, "Okay, do you have enough material for this to be patentable? Does it make sense?" And the answer might be no, but at least you've done the homework at that point. We hope students will start earlier eventually. So where we'd like to go is that more students are filing what's called a provisional patent prior to competition, and provisional patents don't have patent prior to competition, and provisional patents don't have much cost associated with them. That said, they're only as good as what you submit. And Scott can probably speak more to that. So ideally they'd get to it earlier. Right now it's after they're competing.

Ashley Mengwasser: It's part of the process though.

Roxanne Moore: Yeah.

Ashley Mengwasser: Talk about provisional patents for a second, Scott.

Scott Frank: Provisional patents, I think are oftentimes as, like Roxanne was saying, are overlooked and they're not going to get you the real patent by that filing, but it does kind of put a stake in the ground and it does give you some rights. I will just simply say, it's like Roxanne said, it's only as good as what you put in on the paper, but if you fully describe your invention and you submit it to the patent office, and again, it's a very small fee, you then can use that in your real patent application. And that oftentimes, and there's lots of people who have done this, can be tremendously valuable down the road.

Ashley Mengwasser: Absolutely. Let's leave our teachers with a call to action, how they can do more to expand K-12 innovation in their sphere while protecting intellectual property. What would you like them to do next? What's the call to action here? Let's start with you Roxanne.

Roxanne Moore: I'd just love to see more teachers embrace inventiveness in themselves and their students, and I hope that K-12 InVenture Prize and our curriculum gives them some starting point in how to do that and how to start getting back off script.

Ashley Mengwasser: Yes. And where can they go for that curriculum?

Roxanne Moore: K12inventure.gatech.edu, and also K12inventure.org is our curriculum site. So both.

Ashley Mengwasser: And you can register there to participate?

Roxanne Moore: Absolutely. You can register there to participate in our competitions. We're already going in the '24, '25 season, but what I would really encourage teachers to do is come see our state finals on March 12th, 2025. Come be a judge, come see what these kids are doing. Come see the range of inventions. Don't think, oh, this isn't for me. Don't write yourself off. Come judge, come experience. And then you'll be ready to come to one of our summer workshops where amazing expert teachers like Julia and others, train you in how to do this process and how to engage with our curriculum and we can pair you with senior mentors and then you'll be off to the races for next school year.

Ashley Mengwasser: And it's a window into what's possible.

Roxanne Moore: A hundred percent.

Ashley Mengwasser: Just seeing all of those wonderful poster boards and everything.

Roxanne Moore: If you don't leave inspired, I don't know what else to do for you. You may not have been awake.

Ashley Mengwasser: Julia, what's your call to action to teachers as one?

Julia Varnedoe: Well, just to tag onto what you said, Roxanne, that was my first experience was going to the state competition and it blew me away. I couldn't believe what the kids were doing. I couldn't believe that younger kids were doing things so well, and now it's expanded to first grade. Are they doing kindergarten yet?

Roxanne Moore: Yeah, we have some kindergartners.

Julia Varnedoe: Kindergarten through 12th grade, which is incredible. And they're able to do these things. So seeing it is believing it and seeing that helps. But also be willing to take a risk, be willing to jump in. You're not supposed to be an expert. We're all building the plane while flying it, and that's what we do as teachers. Be willing to take a risk and learn something that scares you a little bit, because it is a little scary to teach something so open-ended.

Through the support that we have, through the trainings and the mentorships, you learn that's normal in that process. It should be a little uncomfortable. It should be, I don't know how this is going to go. It always ends up turning out at the last minute, amazing. But in that process, you're not quite sure, and that's hard for a lot of teachers, but if we want our kids to be thinkers, and we want to grow that next generation of creative people who are going to move the needle on problems in our world, that's what they need to do. So just find a way to do it. And that curriculum is already there. You don't have to invent the curriculum, which is a huge thing for most teachers.

Ashley Mengwasser: You just have to be inventive with the curriculum.

Julia Varnedoe: Yes.

Ashley Mengwasser: Very nice. And you mentioned the next generation, what's coming around the bend, Scott, you said the carrot that was dangled for you originally was come see the future, come work in intellectual property. What is your call to action, in terms of GIPA standpoint, what you would like teachers to do next?

Scott Frank: I think Roxanne and Julia said it well. These children, they have it in them and they are our future. And I just encourage all educators to think of every single student as just a box of ideas, because they all have them, and cultivate them, and help them to understand how to protect them and how to even take them into other places and other people's hands. If you can do that when you're young, it's just so much easier when you get older.

Ashley Mengwasser: Absolutely. It starts the engine.

Scott Frank: Yes.

Ashley Mengwasser: Absolutely. Thank you, Roxanne, Scott, and Julia. You all make IP infectious whether that IP stands for Intellectual Property or InVenture Prize, so thank you very much. Don't you love how that works out? I have already caught a case of innovation fever interviewing young inventors has been the highlight of my career and this year I'm the proud creator and host of GPB Education's digital series, Tiny Mike, Big Designs. My colleague Ashlyn and I travel the state to capture invention ideas that have excelled in Georgia Tech's K through 12 InVenture Prize, even GIPA has promoted and shared our series, so you can follow at GPB Education to enjoy posted and new episodes. Every tiny mic Tuesday we call it. Trust me, your students will get a kick out of this. Check out this tiny mic episode featuring one of Julia's Soap Creek students, Namir. I'm here with Namir. I rhyme all the time and I'm here to get the plot on Seabot 2.0.

Namir: It is a coded robot that filters water.

Ashley Mengwasser: How did you come up with a water filtration idea?

Namir: I looked at people who didn't have clean water to drink and I thought that this could be a way to fix that problem.

Ashley Mengwasser: Take me through it.

Namir: So it starts out with this M-bot, which converts the code into the wheel, which moves, and as it moves, it carries the pulley system with it, the water would flow down this pipe into the filter system and down through the bottom.

Ashley Mengwasser: I think it's brilliant. Crystal clear idea. See what I did there?

Namir: Yeah.

Ashley Mengwasser: Nobody likes my puns. How did it change you, this process of inventing?

Namir: It made me more aware of what type of problems other people face who aren't as fortunate as us. So I just wanted to find a way to help them and to maybe save their life if they, no, get diarrhea or something.

Ashley Mengwasser: Nobody wants diarrhea or something. Nobody. High five, Namir. Brilliant and hilarious. You can see how invention education expands student worldviews and improves student engagement. Thank you for fostering a spirit of student innovation in your classroom. You're a great teacher. Maybe it's time to dust off my Findomatic design. Sadly, Scott, I don't think I worked out the science to need patent protection. I'm your host, Ashley. But, back next week to launch our latest classroom conversations creation. Goodbye for now.