To many students, creativity is something designated for the 0.5 fine arts credit required to graduate. Paintbrushes, pencils, eraser shavings, and paints are all seemingly required for many to even consider the idea of thoughtfully exploring ideas or considering potential creations. However, beyond the stereotypical art classrooms lies the Fab Lab. It may not immediately bring to mind the thoughts of expression; however, upon first step into the classroom, it’s the first thing that comes to mind.
The classroom is littered with student expression. Computers glow with drafting future designs in progress. Step into the next room and you’ll hear the hum of 3D printers going, the ka-thunk of laser printers, and students chatting while they work. There’s so much to do in Fab Lab, a lot that many seem to overlook.
“I made a Coraline notebook,” said Mercury Evans, a Fab Lab student. “And I made the cutest Max and Ruby little stand. It’s my favorite thing of all time that I’ve made. I have four copies of it because Josh had to redo it a lot because it kept not fitting into its stand. But oh my gosh, I love it so much. I have it on my bookshelf. What else? We made 3D-printed keychains.”
“I built a guitar here,” said Ava Stadler, another student. “I did that over the summer. You do a wide variety of things in [Intro to Fab Lab], and then you can basically just do whatever you want for individual projects and community projects, or whatever. And you get to make a lot of different stuff.”
“As long as it’s not a weapon, you can create almost anything in Fab Lab that you want to,” said Josh Nielsen, a teacher’s assistant for the sixth-hour class.
The things that can be assembled in the Fab Lab are nearly endless. When Norse Starian Naomi Matthiesen entered the lab on April 7 during sixth-hour, the class was in the middle of creating molds. Once hardened, these molds would be filled with various materials. Students had designed the mold with a 3D printed object that they designed on their own, and then attached them to the bottom of a cup and mixed a substance that would form the mold. Brigett Fisher, another student, created a duck named Petey. Evans had created an apple, then accidentally broke the stem and was in the process of reprinting it. Travis Ryan printed a Lego brick. Everyone was still working on the same project but still retaining their individuality.
“Why did I join Fab Lab?” Evans asked. “I heard it was a lot of hands-on stuff, and I’m a very hands-on learner. So I thought it’d be a great opportunity to do more hands-on learning because a lot of the classes are very ‘take notes, take tests.’ This is ‘make cool things, be creative!’”
“It’s a unique opportunity because this kind of stuff is like, not very prevalent,” Fisher said. “Like, it’s very rare for a school to have this kind of thing. So you know, once you’re gone, [the Fab Lab is] gone.”
“I think one of the things that you learn in here is that you have to be okay with things not working out well the first time,” said Mrs. Carter, the teacher of the Fab Lab classroom. “You learn a lot from all the things that some people might say are failures. I think that they’re just part of the process. We talk about failing forward a lot of times, because you learn from it. And like, what are we going to do to make it better the next time? Okay, so sometimes we made it work, but it’s not pretty. What do we do if we want it to be pretty? What do we have to do?”