Last spring, the Idea Lab Leadership Team was established to help promote the use of the space within the Hockaday community. Since then, the team has been steadily working towards integrating the Idea Lab into student’s everyday lives. 

Dr. Katie Croft, the team’s faculty mentor, helps manage the board and facilitate the projects that the students aspire to create.

“Essentially the students on the team have ownership of the Idea Lab and get to have a say in how the space is used,” Croft said.

In order to help advertise the use of the space, the members on the board have been conducting research on how people would like the see the space used, meeting with many teachers and other peers to get a variety of different inputs. Starting at the beginning of the school year, the team has been frequently meeting over lunch and conference periods. They share their thoughts and ideas over these lunches as well as through shared Google Docs.

Members of the board have talked with one fourth grade class in particular—Create, Collaborate and Innovate—which frequently utilizes the space. The class, which hasn’t existed for much over a year, serves the purpose of teaching fourth grade students how to innovate and invent different gadgets. Because this class occupies the Idea Lab so often, the board thought it necessary to meet with them and get their feedback on what could be added to the Lab.

Sophomore Isabel Peppard serves on the Idea Lab Leadership Team.

“They use the space every week, so we decided to ask them what we could add to make it better,” Peppard said.

Peppard is one of 10 members on the board, and also happens to be the only sophomore; however, the board will soon be expanding. Once applications have been reviewed, the team of 10 will expand accordingly to accommodate a few more members once the selections have been made.

After conducting a fair amount of research, the team could then begin purchasing new objects for the Lab. Thus far, they have bought a variety of different objects to occupy the space. Some of these new purchases include bean bag chairs, a coloring wall, new tables, storage bins, kits of interactive building toys and tools, a new 3-D printer and 3-D pens.

Abby Fleischli is a senior on the Leadership Team. She feels that the team has accomplished a large amount in the short time that it has been established. However, Fleischli believes that traffic in the Lab will increase even more as more events are held in its space and more purchases are brought in.

“I think we will begin to see more results at the end of this year when we start to hold more projects and competitions in the space,” Fleischli said. “For now, we have to continue working on the space before we bring in more students.”

– Charlotte Dross – Staff Writer