Crossroads News

InvenTeam Showcases Prototype at EurekaFest

Upper Schoolers continue work on home water-usage monitoring device.
This summer, it was off to EurekaFest for members of the InvenTeam, the group of Crossroads Upper Schoolers who earned a Lemelson-MIT grant to create a prototype of their home water-usage monitoring device.
 
Twelfth-graders Jacob Brooks, Alex Frye, Emma Blue Kirby and Sarah Saltzman, 2016 graduates Andrea De Oliveira, Alex Groenendaal-Jones, August Gross and Jackson Stogel, and their educator supervisors Kelly Castaneda and Paul Way traveled to Boston for the three-day confab. There, they showed off their H2.0 Water Meter Attachment prototype with fellow high school Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams from across the country.
 
While at the conference, held from June 16-18 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Museum of Science, the Crossroads students participated in the InvenTeams Showcase, during which they displayed their prototype and materials, and answered questions from attendees.  
 
In addition to presenting their own project, the Upper Schoolers saw presentations from the Student Showcase winners and joined in a design challenge that involved the various InvenTeams finding a way to lift as many rubber duckies as possible into the air at the Museum of Science. The Crossroads team also toured the MIT campus and visited the MIT Museum.
 
After spending several months during the last school year working on the device, meant to help address California’s ongoing drought, the InvenTeam currently has a working prototype and two mobile applications—iOS and Android.  
 
The team has applied for an Innovative Conservation Program (ICP) grant, which would provide funding to further develop the prototype so that it can withstand the elements. The grant would also help the team produce multiple devices and begin testing them in actual households.
 
With five of the nine team members off to college now, the original InvenTeam has dissolved. However, they’re pursuing a patent and the student group will continue to contribute to the project as they can, according to Kelly. If Crossroads earns the ICP grant, new team members, chosen based on interest and needed skills to move into the testing direction, will be added.
 
Paul, a science teacher who mentored the InvenTeam, said he was proud of the immensely high level of technical work—complex computer programming challenges, electrical engineering and 3-D design—that the students accomplished and the camaraderie that they found as they worked long hours attacking the problem of the drought.  
 
For math teacher and team mentor Kelly, it was the team’s high standards and ability to achieve them that made her most proud of the group. Whether it was a technical challenge or the presentation of their ideas and accomplishments, the students knew what “good” looked like and would not rest until they achieved it.
 
“The team learned a variety of skills that were not taught in classrooms at Crossroads and employed them to accomplish a significant body of work,” Kelly said. “I am thrilled with their progress and excited to witness the next stages.”
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