By Beth Smith, M. Ed. | #smithingifted
I am so excited to share the The Global Innovation Lab at the New Mexico Association for the Gifted Fall Institute 2026: Unmasking Brilliance at Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico, on October 23–24, 2026.
This project has grown from a simple idea into something much bigger: a way for gifted students to connect, collaborate, think critically, and solve real problems that matter.
The goal is simple:
Think Bigger. Create Together. Change the World.
What Is The Global Innovation Lab?
The Global Innovation Lab is a student-centered experience designed to help gifted learners tackle real-world challenges through creativity, research, collaboration, design thinking, and innovation.
Instead of asking students to simply learn about a problem, we ask them to do something with what they learn.
Students investigate issues, examine evidence, identify patterns, consider different perspectives, collect data, design possible solutions, test their thinking, and communicate their ideas to others.
Most importantly, they begin to see themselves as people who are capable of creating meaningful change.
Gifted Students Need Real Problems
Gifted learners are often at their best when the answer is not obvious.
They need opportunities to wrestle with questions such as:
- How could we reduce water waste in our community?
- How might technology improve people’s lives without creating new problems?
- What would a sustainable community look like 50 years from now?
- How can we use data to make better decisions?
- What happens when a solution helps one group but creates unintended consequences for another?
- How could students in different parts of the world approach the same challenge differently?
These are not worksheet questions.
They are thinking questions.
And that is exactly where gifted learners can shine.
Five Big Ideas Drive the Lab
🌎 Global Challenges
Students explore authentic problems affecting communities locally and around the world.
The goal is not simply to understand an issue. Students are challenged to investigate it deeply enough to begin imagining possible solutions.
🤝 Teamwork & Empathy
Innovation cannot happen in isolation.
Students learn to listen to other perspectives, collaborate with peers, understand the needs of others, and recognize that a good solution has to work for real people.
As the Global Innovation Lab expands, one of the most exciting possibilities is connecting classrooms beyond their own schools and communities.
Imagine students in New Mexico comparing ideas with students in another state—or eventually another country.
That changes the learning completely.
đź’ˇ Innovate & Solve
Students use creativity and design thinking to move from:
“Here is the problem.”
to
“What could we do about it?”
They brainstorm, prototype, revise, test, defend, and improve their ideas.
Failure is not the end of the process.
It is information.
đź“Š Data-Driven Decisions
One of my favorite parts of the Global Innovation Lab is pushing students beyond opinions.
Students learn to ask:
What does the evidence actually tell us?
They collect information, analyze patterns, compare possibilities, and use evidence to justify their decisions.
That shifts students from simply having ideas to being able to defend those ideas with evidence.
🌱 Sustainable Futures
Students also have to think beyond the immediate solution.
What happens next?
Who benefits?
Who might be negatively affected?
What resources are required?
Could the solution create another problem?
Will it still work five years from now?
That is systems thinking—and it is an incredibly powerful skill for gifted learners.
Real Projects. Real Impact. Real Future.
The Global Innovation Lab is built around a belief I come back to again and again in my classroom:
Students should have opportunities to do work that feels real.
When students believe their thinking matters, the level of engagement changes.
They stop asking:
“Is this for a grade?”
and begin asking:
“Could this actually work?”
That is the kind of learning I want to create more often.
Why I Am Bringing This to NMAGT
The New Mexico Association for the Gifted Fall Institute has always been a place where educators come together to share ideas, challenge our thinking, and find better ways to serve gifted learners.
This year’s theme—Unmasking Brilliance—fits the Global Innovation Lab perfectly.
Giftedness does not always appear as perfect grades, fast completion, or students quietly doing everything we ask.
Sometimes brilliance appears as:
A student asking the question no one else thought to ask.
A child who sees a connection between two completely different ideas.
A student who refuses to accept, “That’s just the way it is.”
A learner who takes apart an idea just to figure out how it works.
A child who imagines a solution adults haven’t considered.
Our job is not simply to identify brilliance.
Our job is to create environments where students have somewhere meaningful to use it.
That is what I hope the Global Innovation Lab can become.
Come Find The Global Innovation Lab
If you are attending the New Mexico Association for the Gifted Fall Institute 2026, I would love for you to come learn more about the project, see what students will be doing, and talk about how this kind of learning can work in gifted classrooms.
📍 Highlands University — Las Vegas, New Mexico
📅 October 23–24, 2026
🎠NMAGT Fall Institute 2026: Unmasking Brilliance
Whether you teach gifted students, lead an enrichment program, work with after-school programs, or are simply looking for ways to make learning more authentic and challenging, I hope you will stop by.
The Global Innovation Lab is only beginning.
And I cannot wait to see where our students take it.
The Bigger Vision
Ultimately, I want students to understand something much larger than any individual project:
They are not too young to contribute.
They are not too young to innovate.
They are not too young to lead.
And they are certainly not too young to begin imagining what the world could become.
Because the future does not simply happen.
We help create it.
🌎 Think Bigger.
🤝 Create Together.
đź’ˇ Change the World.
#smithingifted | The Global Innovation Lab
