ExplorTech

VISION STATEMENT: Vision is "the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom." I'd like to think
that my vision for ExplorTech's future is wise and forward-thinking, but the truth is it is just as much
informed by successes and failures experienced since we hosted our first STEM camp in 2015, with just 8
students. An intern suggested the name "ExplorTech" because we explore 21st-century technologies that
represent our awesome ability to create. We combine mentorship and project-based learning to provide lifechanging
opportunities for our students, many of whom suffer the isolating effects of rural life, race, gender
inequality, gender identity, or emotional stress, and simply need to experience a little success. It is said that
inventors are seen as successful even when their product is not commercially successful. We study advanced
subjects like AI, but our students are not all academic superstars, and some feel inferior to their peers. The
invention process has an uncanny equalizing effect; anyone can invent!

But focusing on IP and invention was an unfulfilled promise until I began teaching public high school.
High school students can produce ideas that rival those I heard daily during the pioneer days of personal
computing. My classes began to resemble early R&D companies like Tandy Corporation, developer of one
of the earliest personal computers, the TRS-80. We couldn't recruit enough trained developers, so we hired
hobbyists, yet our department was a creative oasis! When I left industry two decades later I still worked with
many of these same "untrained" engineers, their names listed alongside mine on US patents. When I saw the
Lemelson-MIT program, much of the program's design was the embodiment of what I had come to visualize
for ExplorTech's future, combining entrepreneurship, engineering, and invention into a program designed to
produce truly professional quality work. This is our future! We will expand to reach students in other school
districts, including our small rural districts and a Fort Worth ISD charter school we served through 2019.
We'll continue our partnership with BRIT. We'll support STEM education for girls through SWENext and
Aspirations in IT. We'll provide everything from computers and software to school clothes, and pay for
virtual classroom career training in AI. And we'd love to form a North Texas regional InvenTeam
combining rural school districts too small to form such a team on their own.

Our Needs

We need volunteers! Please see our opportunities on Voly.org at https://www.voly.org/agencies/profile.html?id=5169
- Public/Private/Home School Outreach Coordinator
- Diversity Programs Coordinator (women, people of color, LGBTQ )
- Editorial Contributor, INVENT! Weekly