At Armstrong Middle School in Philadelphia, students in the Verizon Innovative Learning Lab program are learning that, when it comes to innovation, failure is part of the fun.
This spring, Lab Mentor April Fox challenged her middle schoolers to reimagine a familiar object — the classic bubble wand! The moment students walked into the classroom, they knew something different was happening. Fox greeted them by blowing bubbles throughout the room, which immediately sparked the students’ excitement and curiosity about the day’s lesson.
“The students were very excited when they heard they would be designing and testing their own bubble wands,” said Fox. While she encouraged students to begin by researching different designs, many were eager to jump straight into creating. “I think that excitement really speaks to the power of hands-on learning,” she said.
Innovation Through Iteration and Communication
Students moved through the design thinking process with a singular goal in mind: creating a wand that produced long-lasting and far-reaching bubbles. But what started as a classroom activity quickly turned into a friendly competition among the students. Students developed different designs, ranging from traditional loop wands to more detailed, multi-loop creations inspired by Mickey Mouse’s ears.
As they iterated their designs, they experimented with things like wand thickness and loop size and shape. Through this learn-as-you-go project, they came to understand that very thin wands caused bubbles to pop more quickly, while overly thick designs limited how far the bubbles could travel.
Collaborating with their peers also became a big part of the process. Students swapped ideas throughout the day, applying what they learned from their peers’ experimentation.
“I loved seeing students realize that innovation doesn’t always mean starting from scratch,” Fox shared. “It can also mean improving, adapting and building on ideas.”
To test their creations, students measured how far their bubbles traveled and how long they lasted. Using the Lab’s 3D printers and design software, they fine-tuned their wands to improve subsequent iterations. They discovered, for instance, that three-loop Mickey Mouse-type wands performed especially well because they created many bubbles at once. From that observation, other students then adapted their own prototypes, adding additional loops to improve their wand’s performance.
Testing days were some of the most memorable moments of the project. The classroom buzzed with energy as students cheered each other on, compared their results and offered one another suggestions for improvements.
“Sometimes middle school students do not get enough opportunities to simply play, and this project gave them that chance,” said Fox. During the contests, she intentionally stepped back and was heartened to observe students naturally take on leadership roles, organize activities, encourage classmates and work through disagreements together. “I really got to see the students’ personalities and get to know them,” she added.
Failure as a Path to a Better Solution
Perhaps the most important lesson students learned was that failure does not stop the process. It’s simply part of it. If a design did not work or did not “win” the competition, students did not become discouraged. Instead, they immediately wanted to get back at it and try again.
“It was fun because it’s that design process of going back to the drawing board when it didn’t work,” Fox explained.
Over the course of a week, students continuously tested, redesigned and improved their creations, applying data from each round of experimentation. The process became a powerful example of authentic problem-solving and iterative thinking, where each failure simply pointed the way toward a better solution.
While reworking their designs, students also learned about the entrepreneurial side of their creations. The performance of their bubble wand is only part of the process. By discussing other important factors, such as material type and print time, students learned that multiple considerations go into bringing a product to market. For instance, a design that makes perfect bubbles but takes too long to create or uses a lot of resources will not be sustainable in the long run.
What Fox hopes students carry with them long after the project ends is not simply how to design a better bubble wand, but the confidence that comes from creating something entirely their own.
“I hope they remember the excitement of creating something from their own imagination, testing it, revising it and continuing to improve,” she said. “More importantly, I hope they remember how capable they are. Projects like this help students see themselves as creators, innovators and problem-solvers.”
Fox also emphasized the importance of programs like the Verizon Innovative Learning Lab in providing opportunities that extend beyond traditional classroom instruction.
“These experiences help students connect classroom learning to the real world and show them that their ideas have value,” she said.
Building Pathways for Everyday Innovators
Experiences like this sit at the heart of project-based learning, one of the most widely adopted approaches in K–12 innovation today. Project-based learning gives students the opportunity to move beyond worksheets and into authentic problem-solving, where they must test, refine, collaborate and think critically. In this bubble-wand challenge, students navigated a full design cycle, making decisions that mirrored the work of engineers, product designers and entrepreneurs.
This kind of learning builds confidence because students see the direct impact of their choices, not just the correctness of their answers.
Another major focus in K–12 innovation is the growing emphasis on STEM and STEAM career pathways. Schools increasingly aim to help students understand how early experiences with design, engineering and creative problem-solving can connect to future careers. By experimenting with 3D printing, iterating on prototypes, analyzing performance data and considering the business implications of their designs, students gained exposure to fields like industrial design, mechanical engineering, product development and marketing.
More importantly, these experiences help students see themselves as capable of pursuing those opportunities in the future.
At Armstrong Middle School, a simple bubble wand became far more than a classroom activity. It became a reminder that when students are equipped with the right resources, encouraged to take creative risks and given the freedom to fail forward, innovation truly has no limits.
To learn more about the Verizon Innovative Learning Lab program, start here.
