By Victoria Kezra, The Mercury News
Students at Columbia Middle School got the unique opportunity on Oct. 14 to learn about 3-D printing, laser cutting projects and more thanks to a visit from the Mobile Maker Lab from Santa Clara University.
The mobile lab is a van decked out as a maker space, complete with the technology and tools students need to make unique projects.
Columbia eighth-graders rotated through stations that allowed them to watch 3-D figurines get printed and lasers cut puzzles and create vinyl stickers featuring the school’s bulldog mascot.
“I think it’s pretty cool since I was really interested in 3-D printing and it’s not often I get to see a 3-D printer in life, so it’s really cool to actually experience this,” said eighth-grader Yin Xiang.
Students were particularly interested in a 3-D printer that was forming plastic replicas of Pokemon characters. A Mobile Maker mentor explained the science behind how liquid plastic becomes a figurine.
The mobile lab is run by Santa Clara University students and has been making its first trips to South Bay schools over the past two months. According to Anne Mahacek, lab manager and research associate in the college’s school of engineering, the project started with funding from a nonprofit program called Makers 4 Good. With input from teachers from around the region, the Mobile Maker Lab developed curriculum for students in grades 7-9.
Having a lab on wheels helps share the resources with multiple schools.
“Part of the reason for the trailer is this is new technology that a lot of schools want to incorporate in their class but might not have funding for it. This is a great way that we can go to the schools and introduce this tech to the students without each school having to have their own maker space,” said Mahacek.
Columbia math and robotics teacher Alexi Badaoui has been working with the engineering and robotics lab at Santa Clara University for the past two summers and has been seeking an outreach partnership between the schools. The Mobile Maker Lab team contacted Badaoui and asked him if his school would be interested.
“It has been now maybe three years that we’ve been thinking about a 3-D printing class. It has not been easy to put together. I have been trying to find opportunities to expose the kids to these technologies,” said Badaoui, adding that he gave students who were not enrolled in science and technology electives priority to attend the mobile lab.
The hope is that the school will have its own 3-D printing class at some point, but until then, Badoui said the Mobile Maker Lab serves as an excellent introduction.
“I think this is a great initiative from Santa Clara University to do outreach and create a curriculum accessible to middle school kids,” said Badaoui. “I cannot express any more (strongly) the importance of exposing all children of middle school ages to advanced technology to motivate them to continue toward engineering or technical careers.”
©2016 the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
