FabPlay

FabPlay Summer Institute was held June 25-27 at Hawken School and about 25 #Maker Educators from the area came to make and learn. Nick DiGiorgio and Anna Delia were the organizers and I am glad they did since we were not having a second #EdcampNEOmaker (like we did last year in August). There were some sessions and lots of making with various Fab Lab/MakerSpace tools. 

We started out making right away. We had 1 ½ hours to make our conference name tag and t-shirt. The equipment available was a couple of laser cutters, two vinyl cutters, two Cricuts, heat press, an embroidery machine, and students silk screening a FabPlay logo.

Jodie Ricci got us thinking by talking to us about Maker Centered Learning and Teaching. Making is dispositional, personal, habits of mind. Teaching looks like facilitating, redirecting authority, co inspirational. Classrooms looks at tools materials access and visibility. A large gap for students is they are not sensitive to the design dimensions of the world. Technology has closed off design. We no longer see that “things come apart”. Besides the Maker Centered Learning book, she also mentioned Creating Cultures of Thinking and Making Thinking Visible as good resources.

​We then broke into two groups based on level of knowledge/experience in FabLabs/MakerSpaces. My group was creating a big flow chart/venn diagram/ outline of resources for various aspects of FabLab/Maker. It is rough and a work in progress. Nick would like to be able to make one that is public and clickable and editable. At lunch, Sonya Prior Jones spoke to us about theFab Lab Foundation. After lunch, we broke into 3 maker sessions (beginner laser cutter, design software logo making, circuits). Anna then went over to the Elementary School and opened her lab for a tour. Then we rounded out the day with dinner and bocci at Pinstripes in Orange Village.

Day 2 started with some general making again (vinyl cutter, 3D printer, circuits, coding….). We broke into 3 groups for sessions. Cory Rice and I did one on tech toys/coding/robotics. The other two sessions were CNC with Shopbot and vinyl cutter and embroidery. Jermeny Shorr talked to us at lunch about TIES and things going on in NE Ohio. After that you could go to the woodshop to make a “wonky robot” (pencil holder) or work with Arduinos. The final session had choices of cardboard automata, 3D design and printing, and computational thinking. We shared our work from the day, then had dinner and open lab for 2 hours.

Day 3 was open lab, lunch and sharing. I did most of my open making on the laser cutter. I wanted to make some gears, make a light box, and cut a Snoopy. This also gave me more time to work with Corel Draw. We are hoping to create a network of #Maker educators that collaborate (so I started a blog to share info NEOmakerEDU) .  We hope to have a meetup in 6 months, then FabPlay again June 2020. We need more of these #Maker meetups, now to get something going in Summit County...

all of my pictures are below