On January 31, the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center and Cricket Media launched their 7th annual invention competition. Not only does it offer students the opportunity to develop important skills like problem solving, critical thinking, and collaboration, this year the challenge also honors the legacy of an inspiring inventor. Dr. InBae Yoon (1936-2014) was a Korean American inventor who passionately believed—like we do—that everyone is inventive…

Think of a time when you had an idea for how to make something better. Did you sketch or build your solutions? Did you share your ideas with classmates, friends, or family? If so, then, congratulations, you’ve already demonstrated your inventive powers.

Did you know that you can easily enter both the Invent It Challenge and National Invention Convention, two world-class STEM-based competitions for students in grades K-12? You’ve already put all the work in to succeed in one of the challenges, so why not make a few small adjustments and enter both?

Do you want to talk to computers? That’s essentially what computer programming is. Computer programming, or coding for short, is the language that computers speak. When you write code, you tell a computer what to do…