Adelle Waldman
Plain Dealer Reporter

Katie Kobe has an idea. She wants to build a flashlight that beeps in the dark, so she can find it when the lights are out, something that would have been useful when the power went off this week.

But the 13-year-old Westlake resident has al´ ready learned a lesson to which centuries of in ventors can relate: “When I build something, it doesn’t always work,” Katie said.

Still, she is in a better position to design her flashlight than many other kids — or than she was just a few days earlier.

Katie spent the past week at Innovation Camp, a new program sponsored by Energizer Corp. and two area nonprofit groups — the Great Lakes Innovation and Development En´ terprise, or GLIDE, and Partnership for Ameri´ ca’s Future Inc.

Katie and about 40 other children in grades five to nine spent their days shuffling from classroom to classroom at Avon Heritage Ele´ mentary School, through mostly hands-on ac´ tivities that included everything from baking s’mores in solar ovens to making rockets and battery-operated devices.

Among the things every child attending camp learned was how to build a flashlight, al beit the standard, nonbeeping variety.

The camp and others like it — the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron has been run ning similar weeklong summer camps within elementary schools since 1990 — are designed to get youngsters interested in science and in novation.

The new Energizer Innovation Camp says it has a twist: Its focus is entirely on energy, a topic that seems particularly important in light of Thursday’s events.

The idea is that children of today will one day be asked to find new, cleaner, and more sustainable sources of power, said Nick Frank´ ovits, executive director of Partnership for America’s Future and a camp organizer and teacher.

“Energy, energy, energy: It’s the third fron tier,” Frankovits said. “But to invent new forms, kids need to really understand it. It’s not like inventing a kitchen utensil. We need to plant the seeds now.”

Frankovits is no stranger to the world of in vention and inventiveness. Since its inception 12 years ago, Partnership for America’s Future has run hundreds of invention workshops for children and for educators, in schools ranging from urban to suburban, public and private.

And its young students have successfully brought products to market. The organization has a relationship with Frey Scientific, a Mans´ field-based supplier of classroom equipment, which has manufactured and sold students’ in ventions.

Frey has sold at least 50 of them, said Karen Broach, elementary curriculum manager for the firm. One of the most successful was a product called the Quizmaster, which facili´ tates competitions in which players buzz in to answer questions. It sells for $239 on Frey’s Web site. “Kids get a portion of the profits,” Broach said.

“Even if it isn’t a big seller — maybe they only earn $400 a year — they learn that they can start small, but dream big, and go for the big dreams.”

Frey does not make much money off its in´ volvement with the partnership, though it doesn’t lose money, either, Broach said.

And for the kids, the payoff of this push to´ ward science and invention can be huge, many say.

These camps have helped to get kids interested in science, not just as a way of passing a hot week in the summer, but as a vo´ cation, said Scott Halm, director of marketing for the National In ventors Hall of Fame’s Camp In vention.

“Our surveys and market re´ search have shown that kids who participate [in the camps] are more likely to pursue science-ori´ ented careers,” Halm said.

Not that it happens in a single week. “But [camp] helps instill in them a desire to learn more,” he said. Kids often return year in and year out, and then go on to act as camp counselors when they are in high school, Halm said.

Judging by Samantha Stepan chak, 13, that sounds plausible.

Not too excited about science be fore, a week at camp has changed her mind. “Now I love science,” said the soon-to-be eighth- grader.

That’s the desired outcome, say Innovation Camp organizers. Putting together the week’s pro´ gram, which is considered a pilot for future camps and also for a hands-on curriculum that can be introduced to the classroom, cost between $25,000 and $30,000, said Cynthia Gravino Elkins, as´ sociate director of GLIDE. The price tag included 75 demonstrations.

Energizer donated the supplies and equipment, while grants from the state helped with the rest.

The children who attended paid $115 each, and 10 schol´ arships were awarded, organiz´ ers said.

The kids who attended were divided by age into groups of five or six, in which they went from classroom to classroom, where they fiddled with magnets, en´ gines and gigantic balloons. They even sat through a lecture or two on such topics as light waves and Sir Isaac Newton.

Frankovits — a geologist by training — did his best to bring the last subject alive on a hot Wednesday morning.

“Did you realize Newton was the dumbest kid in the class?” Frankovits asked a group of young charges. “Nothing made sense to this kid. And then one day the teacher was saying some´ thing and a light bulb went on in his head.”

Then Frankovits paused, and added: “Of course, there were no light bulbs then.”

His six students giggled.

From then on, Newton ex celled, Frankovits said. “He was probably the smartest human be ing who ever walked the earth, smarter than Einstein. He put us on the moon — we used every one of his laws.”

And by that point a roomful of budding scientists appeared to be wholly captivated.