We were looking at some underlying issues within society.

We wanted to improve the delivery systems and mechanisms from one place to another to get it more proficiently.

To be designed was an algorithm that runs on the drone to provide the fastest route and an app that can provide customers with the support that they need and if they ever need to track the drone.

The goal of the Ohio STEM Learning Network is to establish and advance a culture of STEM all across the state and to work with K-12 schools to help them have access to high quality STEM experiences.

We have to get kids who are in school right now, even baby kindergartners, to start to think about how they're problem solvers and innovators.

If there was one phrase that captures the spirit of everything we're doing with all this work, it's experiential learning.

It's immersive.

It's based on real world problems.

So our first idea was like the prototype of the drone.

That's like what our brain went to.

So we first, Ethan first made his own drone.

So a main factor for me was my dad.

My dad is an engineer.

He really inspired me to be like, create something from a really young age.

For this year's Ohio STEM Learning Network Design Challenge, it was 60,000 students engaged, 200 educators, over 50 industry judges, and all of those are new records, I'm told, so some big numbers.

Most colleges look for critical thinking and I think with how competitive a lot of schools are nowadays, the thinking and the processes that we go through in this project will definitely help us in college and beyond.

Students bring what we like to call the uncluttered mind.

They haven't been told no yet, so they just are free to imagine.

Sometimes at the youngest age, they come up with the most clever ideas.

When you care about a problem, you're motivated to solve it.

And at a broader level, with these technologies that are coming out, I tell the students all the time, the grownups have not figured all this stuff out.

We need your help, because it's gonna be your problem to solve when you enter the workforce.

Why not get a head start on it and see where you wanna fit in?

Collaboration, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, teamwork, and putting students in a situation where they have to build a solution as a group really helps get to the root of all of the work that they'll do in the future no matter what industry they choose to work in.

Inside, reshaping work on WOSU Public Media is made possible in part by Aspire, Columbus State Community College, and powered by the Storytellers Trust.