Years ago, I gutted a small sample “Smart Table” that the SMART corporation sent with the massive order of smartboards, back when districts were first getting smartboards. Inside was a projector and a windows desktop, running Windows XP. The mirror and lenses to make it work were interesting…. but it was literally useless. I was in awe of the effort they put into such a bad idea.

So I’ve used this cart for various projects over the years – it was once a rotating display, powered by a fan motor hooked to an old cultivator’s worm gear. Now it is going to be where we house our growing ‘Brainstorming book’.

It is a very strong steel upper lip, so a piano hinge will allow it to fold away nicely. Each class will add their best ideas and be free to see it grow over the years.

For now, it needed a facelift. I discarded two of the smart table side covers, so it was ugly. I also kept the rubber track from the ‘treadmill desk’ (which is it’s own story – it lasted from 2016-2021 as a modified treadmill with a walking table for students to work on). That rubber track is now ringing around the ‘Idea Cart’ with stencil letters on one side.

Classes will help me decide what to stencil on the other four sides. What would be some good names?

~ Peter