NPR – Anya Kamentz
“Fourteen-year-old Yasemine Dursun is an aspiring entrepreneur. Her invention is called the Slapwrap, a braceletlike device for storing earbuds. In a cacophonous hallway crowded with her classmates, she launches into her pitch: “If you’re washing your hands, water can get on your buds and damage them,” the ninth-grader explains. “They can dangle and pick up dirt. This is kind of disgusting, but it can cause acne.” Yasemine came up with her idea for keeping earbuds stored and neat in a class at the Incubator School, a new public school in Los Angeles that focuses on STEM, entrepreneurship, gaming and a collaborative approach to learning. It’s not a charter school — it’s one of several dozen experimental “pilot” schools around the city. This one has about 200 students in grades six to nine. It shares a huge, rundown, mazelike campus with several other regular public schools near Los Angeles International Airport.”(more)