Please find my answers in a Q & A form
Q1. STEAM – How an object created in a FabLab can help learning ?
A1. Models and Prototypes created in Fablab using their machinery dedicated to public students’ use, can give the students a better observations and visualization, to many methodologies when found in their 3D structure, which also could give more details than being demonstrated using a video or a picture projected on a board.
Furthermore, it can be used to create new experimental projects which might benefit not just the regular students but the science’s society as well, when a talented student get an access to some of the expensive manufacturing tools such as 3D printers which can sometimes not be present at their local schools or universities.
Q2. FabLabSchool – Which events, machines, room organisation, etc can help education dedicated third-places?
A2. For projects done by students with the bachelor or schoolar levels, CNC and 3D printing machines are the widely used machines, as they dont need a very complicated know how, or driving knowledge, in addition to their various range of applications.
Q3. LearningTomorrow – How FabLabs help grow a learning society?
A3. FabLabs’s idea of providing a community with expensive machinery with a low running cost budget is by itself a great educational innovation. As it provides the students with the machinery part, or as i may call it, the key to integrate and produce the ideas of their imagination and creativity, which therefore will broaden their horizons and improve their capabilities to produce a more complex projects.
Q4. Inclusion – What innovative pedagogy a FabLab can support to favor diversity and inclusivity ?
A4. the program introduces by FabLab is by itself a support to favor diversity and inclusivity, but they can add the idea of funding a successful project if it meets the requirements or offer a real innovative project.
Q5. OpenBadge – How to recognize accomplishments and skills done in a FabLab?
A5. I would like to recommend, to add a team of experts in the use of machinery and maybe some professors in FabLab sites, who can support and help in developing innovative projects, and as suggested above, maybe ad the idea to fund these projects in favor for some equity at the end of the project.
Q6. FabLabUbiquity – How a mobile FabLab (or better) can favor emergence of new learning practices on one territory?
A6. The idea of a mobile FabLab is and especially in developing countries is very useful, as lots of students might not even know about the machinery working mechanisms or capabilities. It can also encourage stuents to start thinking out of the box, or even motivate them to start a new project.
Best Regards
Kayed Ghannam
Bachelor biomedical engineering student at GJU - Amman,Jordan.