Special Projects

Every year, we host events of all kinds — and watch as an unusual setting changes how people think and what they create. We open our space to education conferences, employee orientations, and professional training. Here, between the labs and the workshops, even the most formal meeting takes on a spirit of curiosity and innovation.

Identifying trends, understanding the future, and beginning to create it here and now. As part of our partnership with the Regional Council, we have expanded technology education opportunities within elementary schools.

Together, we led a pilot program and established robotics teams in the framework of the FIRST LEGO League. During the pilot, students gained hands-on experience in coding and building, developed socially minded tech entrepreneurship, and learned the great value of teamwork. Everything that matters to us in a technological era — advancing it, here and now.

Seeing the other, taking a broad view of society — these are values that drive us. As residents of the Valley, we could see and recognize the war’s impact on the communities of the North as a whole, and on children and youth in particular. We wanted to tell them: You are not alone. We see you. We chose to create a joint project with the youth of Moshav Beit Hillel, who had returned home. Our Council’s youth and the youth of Beit Hillel met, talked, got to know one another — learned about each other’s dreams and needs, and together set out to create and build charming ‘Pause’ corners — spaces of respite for emotional well-being and a sense of calm.

Sometimes all it takes to understand engineering is cardboard and imagination. Fourth-grade students from around the Valley come to us to solve real needs at their schools — from a small bookcase for the library to a seating corner for the classroom. They discover that with the right planning and smart work methods, a material as simple as cardboard can become a chair you can actually sit on.

Sometimes the magic happens behind the scenes. As part of “An Extraordinary February,” bat mitzvah girls from a nearby kibbutz and their parents came to our makerspace to build the set for “Wonder” — a play about a boy who looks a little different. It was a moment of shared creation — of carpentry, paint, and plenty of togetherness.

Our STEM team — ninth-graders from a local high school — chose to face the war head-on, through the lens of mental health. Having spent the start of the year learning physical computing and digital fabrication, the students met with a psychologist to learn about innovative approaches to treating people coping with mental health challenges. They then put their new knowledge to work, developing technological aids for those coping with anxiety and trauma: devices for EMDR therapists, smart bracelets that help regulate breathing, and more.

In the Valley, date orchards are a livelihood, not just a landscape. Ninth-graders from a local school went out to the orchards to see what problems the farmers were actually dealing with. Then, in Idan’s labs, they used physical computing, controllers, and sensors to build solutions: devices that detect red palm weevil larvae, automatic traps, smart pollination systems, and more.

Idan Technology is a different kind of space. When we invite teams from industry and education to an offsite workshop with us, we take them out of the standard meeting rooms and into a space that opens the mind and drives creativity.

תכנית המקפצה היא שיתוף פעולה ייחודי בין עידן טכנולוגי לאגף החינוך והרווחה במועצה, המיועד לתלמידי כיתות ט’ ו-י’ שמתקשים למצוא את מקומם במסגרת החינוכית הרגילה. כאן, הם לא יושבים מול לוח, אלא מתקבצים לצוותי עבודה לפיתוח מוצרים טכנולוגיים אמיתיים. ב 2025 למשל, הם לקחו על עצמם משימה עם משמעות עמוקה – פיתוח אביזרים טכנולוגיים תומכים עבור פצועי צה”ל, בתיאום צמוד עם הצוות הטיפולי של “בית אייל”.

On Purim, everything is possible. Everyone can be, at least for one day, whatever they want to be. Every year in the lead-up to Purim, our makerspace becomes a center of magic and imagination. In the “Extraordinary Purim” initiative, a moving community partnership comes together — volunteers from the Valley and beyond, Gevasol employees, youth and adults — working side by side for three months to create unique, custom-adapted costumes for children with various physical disabilities.

It is a remarkable collaboration, and a moving encounter between need, dreams, and technology.

Once a year, in an intensive one-week program, a select group of eighth- and ninth-grade students from around the Valley learns how to connect physical products to the internet. In 2025, they harnessed IoT technology for the training routine of Hapoel HaEmek’s basketball players. After sitting down with the coaches and athletes, they set to work planning and building, aiming to make the training routine more efficient using technology and IoT-based automation tools.

We decided to challenge those who are used to standing at the front of the classroom. Educators from around the Valley dive into the world of coding with us — not to become programmers, but to understand how to weave these new tools into their teaching, and to get a look behind the scenes of the world their students live in.

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