WACO Community School District received a $25,000 grant from the Washington County Riverboat Foundation. Photo by Sam McIntosh.

Technology inundates our lives every day, but do we have the tools to use it for its career and learning potential?

The WACO Community School District is answering that question with an innovation lab and eSports arena in its high school. With district funding and a $25,000 Washington County Riverboat Foundation grant, the school will be refurbishing a computer lab with new computers, cameras, video editing software, robotics kits, and Raspberry Pi, a tiny single-board computer developed to promote the teaching of basic computer science.

WACO Technology Coach Drew Ayrit gives reasoning to the innovation lab, “Our students use technology every day [but] a lot of that use is for consumption. And we want to make sure that they know that all these technology tools they can use them to learn with, to create with. And the innovation lab is meant to be an exciting place to get students excited about using technology and learning more about how to use technology.”

Ayrit says this lab isn’t designed for one particular class, “The hope is that rather than being tied to one specific class that when teachers or students come up with an idea for a project that would fit for what they’re learning in another class, they can say, ‘Oh, I want to make a video about that,’ and then they can come down and use the innovation lab and the tools that we have in there to meet the project demands for whatever class they are working on.”

WACO has started ordering the equipment for the lab, with the lab beginning to function spring 2018.