Our mobile site launched with three unclassified science and technology projects—Search and Rescue 2.0, Mind of a Quadrotor and The Launch of GPS IIF. Students submitted ideas—text, sketches, videos, prototypes—and worked with Air Force experts to strengthen ideas and then test them in the field with their phones. The most active collaborators were rewarded with badges and given special responsibilities as the projects progressed. This wasn’t the next crowdsourcing effort—we built the classroom of the future, marrying the digital with the physical to solve real problems.

When the three projects concluded, students and classrooms across the country worked together to develop a 3-D printed microbot called The Arachnipede that will be deployed after natural disasters to find survivors. They programmed a quadcopter—a flying robot—to think and navigate a room with minimal human interaction. And finally, they launched a $150 million GPS satellite into a precise point in space—not a simulation, a real GPS satellite.

-Students spent an average time of 47 minutes per visit.

-Nearly 3K ideas were submitted.

-Video content generated of 3MM views.

-500K students participated.