Wendy and Mike Appleby teach at Georgetown School in Georgetown, CA, where they’ve been developing the Georgetown Makerspace and associated programs. They’re starting a new gear-up phase, so I invited them to visit the Innovation Center the other day. They brought their son Sam, and we did some 3D printing, cut some stickers on the vinyl cutter, and set up a plotter job on the X-Carve. We talked about different ways we might work together, and decided on a “sister lab” concept. We kicked around some ideas for a partnership plan, to include sharing information and resources, maybe collaborating on some training, and hopefully hosting Georgetown School students for field trips and work days once our space is built out.
I work chiefly with adults, and it never ceases to amaze me how very competent some children are at using digital tools. After a brief introduction, Sam quickly figured out Tinkercad, and designed some sweet accessories for his action figure, though it took a few rounds of prototypes to get the scale right. Applied mathematics!