Thinking Outside the Box

“I wish I had thought of that!”  How many times do we ask ourselves that question when a new product is introduced?  The Minnesota Student Inventors Congress gives students, K-12, an opportunity to showcase their inventions annually.  A regional exhibition, coordinated by South Central Service Cooperative, will be held Saturday, April 17, 2004 at the Madison East Mall in Mankato.  From this exhibition, ten students will qualify to take their inventions to Expo 2004 – 47^th Annual Minnesota Inventors Congress in Redwood Falls, June 12-13, 2004.

Creativity, innovation, and problem-solving are the main skills students utilize during the invention process. Students are challenged to identify a problem, research it, test solutions, document results, and then display these results—their invention—at the Minnesota Student Inventors Congress.  If chosen regionally, students can display at the state congress, which is the world’s oldest annual invention convention.  This congress is a non-competitive exhibition opportunity for students around Minnesota.  In the past, approximately 50 different students from grades K-12 have exhibited each day.