Page 25 - THE Journal, March/April 2019

Every time a sensor uploads another value to the database online, robots, attached to wooden towers, use light-up propel- lers to display the new number. “They change colors, and the size of the circle and the height of which robots turn on change, depending on what the value is,” Brent Richardson, director of the BakerRipley Fab Lab in Houston, explained, adding that the set-up “gives us another thing we can make with students and educators and then also talk about the way that we represent information.” Photo courtesy of Chevron.
to put on your nightstand, you could say you learned how to solder something; you could talk about the sensor that you helped build that is now ‘sensor 13’ on Lake Houston.”
To demonstrate how the sensor works, the project has also morphed into a data visualization art project, “that we’re using to show the information in a creative way,” said Richardson. Built in time to demonstrate during SXSWedu in Austin, every time a sensor uploads another value to the database online, robots, attached to wooden towers, use light-up propellers to display the new number. “They change colors, and the size of the circle and the height of which robots turn on change, depending on what the value is,” he explained, adding that the set-up “gives us another thing we can make with students and educators and then also talk about the way that we represent information.”
Providing Students with Opportunities to
Be Successful
The project speaks to the nature of the Fab Lab: coming up with something useful in a “community environment,” as Richardson called it, and uncovering “similar needs,” whether that’s monitoring water levels for possible flooding or getting kids involved in STEM.
“If middle school students turn off to STEM at an early age and see it as something they’re not good at, then it’s very hard to get them to re-engage and pursue that later on. So, we have 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds making life decisions because they didn’t like the times table. And that’s not really a great reflection on what all you
can do with STEM or the capacity that students have for being successful in science, technology, engineering and math,” said Richardson. “Our pursuit in the Fab Lab is to give students an experience where they can be successful, apply the learning that they’ve maybe not seen as important or understand the use of it in a fun, enriching way, so that when they go back to the classroom and they have the opportunity to take algebra or not, maybe they’ll decide to do it because they built a robot and felt really great about themselves. Providing opportunities for them to be successful is one of our main goals.”
Dian Schaffhauser is a senior contributing editor for 1105 Media’s education publications, THE Journal, STEAM Universe and Campus Technology. She can be reached at dian@dischaffhauser.com or on Twitter @schaffhauser.
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