Back in 2006 my buddy David and I started giving Presentations to K-12 students. After the first few presentations, we noticed that we were able to connect to the students by relating to their youthful side, keep their attention with interactive demos and interesting research, and inspire them to be as smart as possible. So we started Innovation Inspires, and have continued to work on ways to improve our outreach goals. For David, he is doing his thing as a Drexel Ph.D student traveling around the world attending conferences focused on increasing outreach locally and internationally. For me, I am focused on ways to ensure the students are inspired to do well in school, and retain the inspiration we pass along to them.

Yesterday, I was invited to speak at my old school Paul Revere Middle School. I had the chance to connect with old teachers like Mrs. Reuter and Mrs. Byrd and meet new ones! My mother is a teacher there, and I was actually a student of hers when I attended. I joked with the students about failing her class, and that got a few laughs.  I started out talking about My Home 2.0 which ALWAYS captures the student's attention, and once I have their attention, I present the math and science part of the presentation.

Middle School students are a blast to work with, and I've found them to be the most energertic amongst grade school students. Founder of the blog Thinking Foward, and Author of the book Parent's Guide to Middle School Years, Joe Bruzzese befriended me on Twitter, and shared with me some info on working with Middle School Students. His site, http://thinking-forward.typepad.com/ has some great information and resources for Middle School students and parents, and I encourage you to check it out! I've done about 3 or 4 presentations to middle school students, and I note that these seem to be the years that students are interested in learning about what opportunities are out there for them, and have this itch to want to know more about everything. Check out some clips from my presentation after the break.

A big thanks goes out to Paul Revere M.S. for allowing me to share my experiences and knowledge with the students and big thanks to my little brother Kilroy for recording the video.

Posted by Guru Lloyd | tagged: paul revere middle school, inspires, innovation, lloyd, Presentation, video