The Patent Office, along with the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation and the Ad Council, launched a series of new ads this month to encourage children to invent stuff. The campaign is described in a recent article in the LA Times that features a video of the latest television ad.

The public service ads, which build off a campaign started last year and will appear on TV, radio, the Web and billboards, are aimed at kids between the ages of 8 and 11. The TV version features a boy showing off a very typical boy idea: bicycle tires with suction cups. Hint: it's not a real invention, as you could probably guess when you see the kid riding on the ceiling in the video above.

The idea is to use humor to inspire the next young Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. The ads tell kids, "Anything's possible. Keep thinking," and direct them to Invent Now, a social networking site sponsored by the same groups. Children can upload designs of their inventions, comment on other kids' ideas and play games. The site even walks them through the steps needed to get a real patent. It's like a mini-lesson in intellectual property law (which could come in handy if they're Scrabulous fans.)

Some  of the 1.200 children who have posted inventions to the Invent Now website are girls, too, but there's always the risk that such well-intentioned programs and the media reinforce gender stereotypes by showing boys inventing "typical boy ideas" and girls inventing things for women.

Raising three girls, we've become keenly aware of gender stereotypes in our culture, so we decided to make a special effort to teach our girls that they can do anything.

A Girl Named Pants is a series of children's books I've written to push back against gender stereotypes and teach girls that they can do anything. She'll probably invent something, too, like these women inventors. After all, she can do anything!