Secondary school students from across Sligo got a glimpse into the future of invention at a ‘Fab Lab’ workshop, organised by IT Sligo.
The Institute’s Creative Design programme and Centre for Design Innovation staged the day-long event, which was delivered by staff from the Nerve Centre in Derry/Londonderry.
The Fab Lab is a global network of digital fabrication and computation labs. It was initially conceived out of MIT’s Centre for Bits and Atoms (CBA) and has now expanded to over 400 labs around the world.
The underlying objective of a Fab Lab is to serve as an open access platform for learning and innovation that can facilitate a place to play, to create, to learn, to mentor and to invent.
The Fab Lab concept is now a global technology movement, which connects global communities of learners, educators, technologists, researchers, makers and innovators across a knowledge sharing network that spans over 30 countries.
About sixty students from secondary schools across Sligo attended this inaugural event at IT Sligo.
Dr. David Tormey, Senior Lecturer and Research Principal from the Institute’s School of Engineering and Design said the Institute was delighted to give students the opportunity to experience first hand the latest design and prototyping technologies for digital manufacture.
“Fab Labs are increasingly being adopted by Schools and Universities as platforms for facilitating creativity and teamwork through problem-based, applied STEM and entrepreneurial education,” Dr Tormey explained. “Students can develop a wide a range of soft and technical skills sets through design, creativity and innovation using the Fab Lab model.”
For more information on the Fab Lab, visit http://www.fabfoundation.org.