INNOVATION GENERATION
INHUB INNOVATION LEARNING COMMUNITY
INTRODUCING INHUB The Henry Ford’s innovation learning community built by educators for educators In 2018, The Henry Ford introduced its comprehensive The Innovation Project fundraising campaign, launched its Model i learning framework and acquired The STEMIE Coalition, a nonprofit global consortium of youth invention and entrepreneurship programs. An overarching goal of these bold moves: to strengthen invention education offerings to children across the country and around the world and to help millions of kids learn how to be innovative, inventive and entrepreneurial. After raising more than $100 million for The Innovation Project, offering a free Model i primer and lesson plans to hundreds of teachers and welcoming thousands of K-12 students to The Henry Ford for Invention Convention Worldwide events, The Henry Ford is announcing the next step in its aggressive push to help prepare all learners, regardless of backgrounds or barriers, to be world-changing innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs. It’s called inHub.
DID YOU KNOW? / The Henry Ford is the host site of Invention Convention Michigan and Invention Convention U.S. Nationals. See Page 19 for information about the 2021 conventions.
IN THE SPRING OF 2021, The Henry Ford is set to launch inHub. A global resource for activating an innovative mindset, inHub is a learning community powered by The Henry Ford and Invention Convention Worldwide. Built by educators for educators, it is accessible online, membership based, and most importantly, it leverages The Henry Ford’s Archive of American Innovation. “At The Henry Ford, we are strategically focused on creating an innovation learning movement, on developing products and resources rooted in our artifacts and experiences that support this movement, and on building a community where educators can communicate with each other about their successes, failures, hopes and dreams for this movement,” said Matthew Majeski, The Henry Ford’s managing director and chief marketing/digital officer. InHub, according to Majeski, is the “how” to increasing teacher and student access to The Henry Ford’s artifacts, experiences and stories that layer on core disciplines such as STEM, social studies and language arts. It is the mechanism or portal that will help morph and expand already successful programming, such as The Henry Ford’s Model i learning framework, which is focused on helping teachers teach the habits and actions of innovation and innovators. It is also the connecting tissue that will further build the Invention Convention Worldwide infrastructure and help reach its mission to see 10 million children learn how to unlock real-world skills for identifying
For more information on inHub, visit inhub.thehenryford.org. 16
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problems, sharing solutions and implementing ideas. Within inHub, members, depending on their level of membership, will gain access to exclusive content for four areas of focus and impact: curriculum resources, digital asset library, professional development and certification, and virtual field trips and experiences. That equates to giving teachers and their students unparalleled access to The Henry Ford’s Model i lesson plans, speaker series, sponsored workshops and webinars, professional development and certification, digital content, events such as Invention Convention and so much more. To start, inHub will be offered to educators across the United States only, with both a free and paid membership level available. Majeski added that future-forward plans include offering inHub memberships to other partners and affiliates. Long term, The Henry Ford and the Opportunity Insights Project at Harvard University are working together to identify schools, school districts, cities and states that are the least likely to provide innovation opportunities for students. Then they will strategize on how best to provide those areas with innovation learning and access to inHub to address the innovation opportunity gap. “We want to level the playing field,” said Majeski. “InHub is our portal, our tool that can give us a leading role in the innovation learning movement. We want everyone to have the opportunity to become the next Thomas Edison, Henry Ford or Rosa Parks.”