Photos from the Visible Futures Lab at the School of Visual Arts. #d32015 @VFLab @SVA_News

Visible Futures Lab at SVA
Run by Tak, Boris, and John

Lab service for all the 22 SVA grad programs – rotating use of space in the lab (set design, fashion, props, design projects) by appointment-only consultations and one-on-one lessons

$1.5 million space

Padded floor so as not to transfer vibrations to lower floors. 

Space for making fast prototyping and interactive design
Can accommodate projects using wood, plastic, metal, electronics 

Tak and Jaymes Dec are founders of the Nerdy Derby

Garage door divider that comes down to separate the space

Casters on every piece of large furniture for flexible design

3 different heights of work tables. 

Roland VersaCAMM printer and cutter VS-300
Janome MB-4 sewing machine system

Lots of other machines 
   
                                                                                                           

Always love visiting @JaymesDec’s FabLab at @MarymountNY! #D32015 #MakerEd #STEAM #dtk12

                                

Can’t wait to see @JaymesDec at #TEDxNYED on 4/28…

See the full gallery on Posterous

This month’s NYCIST meeting is being hosted at Marymount’s 97th street building where Jaymes Dec set up a Fab Lab (short for Fabrication Lab, though Fabulous Lab would be apt as well). The space he designed and the number of machines he has gathered is impressive. Even more impressive are the awesome projects his students are doing.

Jaymes will be giving a talk at the third annual TEDxNYED taking place on April 28 at the Museum of the Moving Image. See the full lineup of speakers here: http://tedxnyed.com

Notes from our tour of the Marymount’s new Fab Lab with @JaymesDec

I just got back from a tour of Marymount‘s new Fab Lab led by Jaymes Dec (@JaymesDec) and Lesa Wang. (Fab is short for Fabrication) Lesa has been teaching art at Marymount for years, and she says her whole curriculum has changed as a result of having the Fab Lab available to her. Marymount is an all-girls PreK-12 independent school on the Upper East Side. Visiting along with me from The School at Columbia University were Greg Benedis-Grab (science), Gina Marcel (K-2 Technology), Dena Rothstein (5th Grade), and David Waterbury (Tech).

Jaymes learned about technology as a graduate student in the ITP program at NYU Tisch. (ITP = Interactive Telecommunications Program). He has experience teaching afterschool robotics classes at Vision Education. Jaymes helped establish GreenFab in the Bronx, and when their 3-year funded project ended, he happened to be consulting for Marymount to set up their Fab Lab. Currently, he is employed by Marymount working on projects with grades K, 5, 6, 7, 8.

In terms of building their 3D designs, Jaymes prefers Tinkercad over 3DTin. He says Google SketchUp isn’t designed to create 3D files natively – for that, you need to install a plugin.

In the Fab Lab are a ridiculous number of printing machines including an Epilog Laser ($30K) and the corresponding filter system. There are also multiple CNC printers including Makerbots and ShopBots. (CNC = Computer Numeric Control) The Shopbot is a 3D milling machine that can drill on 3 axes. This particular unit has a digitizing probe that can act like a 3D scanner so you can scan, modify, and print!

There were awesome examples of student work on the whole 4th floor:

– In the Science room, students were constructing workable prosthetic arms.

– In the Art room, students were redesigning toothbrushes, building their “dream car,” and making models of buildings.

– In the Fab Lab, students were building a variety of functional 3D objects.

Our ultimate ulterior motive for visiting was to see examples of innovation in education and to find a way for our 5th graders and Marymount’s 5th graders to collaborate on a project. Both schools study Ancient Greece, so one possible collaboration may involve The School kids designing temples and outsourcing to Marymount kids for actual printing (and vice versa). Or maybe we even have kids collaborating “long distance” on a design project using GoogleDocs and Skype.