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REDSTONE, Pa. (AP) — In Kevin McKee's classroom, students can build virtually anything.
McKee, who taught math for 14 years, is the primary teacher in an ultra-modern shop classroom— dubbed the Fab Lab —at Intermediate Unit 1.
The Fab Lab, short for digital fabrication lab, opened in the fall at the Intermediate Unit's Colonial campus in Redstone, Fayette County. There's also a mobile Fab Lab, housed in a 28-foot trailer hauled by a pickup truck, that travels to schools throughout the region.
"The motto here is: 'Dream it. Design it. Make it,' " McKee said. "There are really no parameters."
Using a $1.2 million grant from Chevron, Intermediate Unit officials transformed the building's library-turned-media space into the Fab Lab, said Intermediate Unit 1 spokeswoman Sarah D'Urzo. The three-year grant includes funds for training and professional development.
Students learn to design items digitally, then take their designs on flash drives and plug them into computers connected to the machines throughout the room that will make parts of their product.
The lab is equipped with two 3-D printers, a 3-D scanner, a laser cutter— which can "raster," or engrave —a vinyl cutter, a milling machine, a soldering station, kiln, sewing machine and a ShopBot, a large computer-operated machine that cuts or engraves wood using one of 20 bits.
McKee showed off etched LED night lights on a wooden base and clear acrylic speakers with an MP3 jack in the front — all made by students.
"We try to incorporate two to three machines in each project," McKee said.
Most recently, students used the laser cutter to make snowflake-shaped Christmas ornaments and used the vinyl cutter to make a personalized decal for the snowflake's center, he said.
By the end of the school year, all of the campus' roughly 130 students, from elementary through high school, should have had class in the lab, McKee said.
"It's phenomenal in here. We want to introduce every student to it," he said. "You have kids who aren't good in the classroom who come in here and excel."
Technical education is growing nationally as demand for skilled workers in fields such as manufacturing, welding and the multidisciplinary field of mechatronics grows. Proponents say those fields are no longer dusty, monotonous factory jobs, but rather professions that require digital design know-how and critical thinking skills.
The Fab Lab in Redstone is one of about 800 across 75 countries derived from a professor's class at Massachusetts Institute of Technology called "How to Make Almost Anything," according to Jean-Luc Pierite, spokesman for the Boston-based Fab Foundation. The Carnegie Science Center on Pittsburgh's North Shore houses another Fab Lab in the region.
"I think really our goal— not so much our end goal, but our goal in general —is giving people access to technology," Pierite said. "One of the major components (of the Fab Lab charter) is open access because our Fab Labs are mainly for educational purposes, but also for access to technology and fostering entrepreneurship in communities that wouldn't necessarily have access to technology that we have in the lab."
The mobile Fab Lab helps further that mission, as will adult evening education classes the Intermediate Unit hopes to soon offer in the lab, D'Urzo said.
Schools throughout the Intermediate Unit 1 service area of Fayette, Greene and Washington counties can hire the mobile Fab Lab for $1,500 a week. Non-IU1 schools are charged $3,000 per week. The cost of project materials is not included in the price.
The fee includes use of the trailer's equipment, as well as help from Brandon Prentice, the Fab Lab manager, who works with teachers beforehand to develop and implement hands-on projects for students. He staffs the mobile lab during the duration of its visit.
The mobile lab has traveled to three schools so far but is booked far into next semester, D'Urzo said.
Most school visits are for one or two weeks, and classroom teachers remain in charge, said Prentice, who described his role as an assistant who helps with the machines.
The mobile lab is nearly identical to the stationary lab, but it uses laptops instead of desktop computers and a miniature ShopBot that better fits in the trailer, Prentice said.
McKee said that when he was in school, he didn't have specific STEM— science, technology, engineering and math —classes.
"That's the push nowadays," McKee said. "Now it's like thinking outside the box. It makes students a lot more creative."
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Information from: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, http://pghtrib.com
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