FabLab@School

Funded by Euan Baird and SEED (Schlumberger Excelence in Education Development), and Stanford University, 2009-2011

More information at the Stanford Makers' Club website

A FabLab is a small-scale digital workshop equipped with computer-controlled tools, such as laser-cutters, routing machines, 3D scanners, 3D milling machines, and programming tools. In a FabLab, you can "make almost anything,", in other words, create different types of projects and products. There are over 50 FabLabs around the world, open to local inventors, small businesses, students, and garage entrepreneurs, producing solutions to local problems.

FabLabs were invented by Prof. Neil Gershenfeld at MIT. They communicate globally via video-conferencing and internet technologies and share knowledge with a global network of other labs, each offering its own expertise in different industries and disciplines.

Despite the potential impact of FabLabs in education, they are mostly focused on adults, entrepreneuruship, and product design. The FabLab@School, created by Prof. Paulo Blikstein at Stanford University, was created to address that issue. It is a new type of FabLab especially designed for school and children, with several special characteristics:

• A special focus on education and on the connection with the disciplines (sciences, math, engineering)
• Lower cost of implementation and ownership, intensive use of repurposed and low-cost materials
• Especially-designed teacher preparation materials and workshops, as well as activities for children to engage in cutting-edge scientific investigation.
• Software tools for scientific modeling and simulation.
• Equipment for sensor-enabled scientific experiments in physics and chemistry.
• Easy to use robotics and sensing equipment.
• Impact measures and learning metrics especially designed for project-based environments. 

A pilot FabLab@School was built at Stanford University on Jan 2009, and the first FabLab@School in a school was inaugurated in June 2011, at the 1502 IMEI High-School in Moscow, Russia (see below a TV report of the inauguration).