Students work on the future of digital creation, replication

In Paula White’s classroom at Crozet Elementary, there is a basket of paper shapes that her gifted students have created, printed and assembled using a computer program informally called Fab Lab.
The shapes themselves are simple, but in the eyes of a group of fifth-graders, they create endless sets of tables, ballroom chairs, dresses and more. The goal for students Adriana Bland and Celine Kimata is to create an eagle with the program and fly it around the school.

Celine already has used the fabricator to create an early version of the Great Pyramid.
“You can pretty much add color or design anything you want,” she said. “I can do anything with it.”
Crozet Elementary is one of three area schools testing out a 2-D fabricator in conjunction with the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education. The education school is working together with Cornell University scientists to get both 2-D and 3-D fabrication into the classroom. Curry is starting that process by adding Fab@School instruction into its teacher curriculum.
Glen Bull, co-director of the Curry School’s Center for Technology and Teacher Education, said the fabricators can enhance children’s education in math, science, technology and more.

“Digital fabrication will change everything in our lives over the next 15 years,” Bull said.
To use either the 2-D or 3-D fabricators, a student creates an object on the Fab@School software. Students can see how the 2-D object will print on a flat piece of paper, a view called “the net.” Once the object prints out of a regular printer, a student loads and aligns the sheet on a plastic carrier sheet and sends it into the printer-like fabricator.
Guided by printed registration marks on the paper, the fabricator cuts and perforates the sheet as according to its design. A student can easily pop out the finished project and assemble it. The printer can handle some other flat materials, such as vinyl.
Robert Berry, an assistant professor at Curry, said the 2-D fabricator helps to teach about spatial reasoning and depth because students can investigate an object from all angles.

“Teachers may have models of a cube or sphere, which kids can touch,” Berry said. “Here, kids see all of the flat spaces.”
Fabrication, like a child’s imagination, seems to have endless applications. During her time in White’s class recently, fifth-grader Victoria Dell modified her design for a paper mailbox that kindergarteners and fifth-graders will use to share letters with one another. Another group printed out and assembled a fleet of rectangular models to craft a replica of the Twin Towers.
On a table near the fabricators in UVa’s Children’s Engineering facility in Ruffner Hall, there is group of paper dolls and buildings, gears made of silicon caulk and a tiny chocolate Rotunda perched atop a graham cracker. The latter objects were made with a 3-D fabricator, which is about the size of a large microwave. It has two bays that can expel a chosen material, adding thin layers until the object is the desired size and shape.

Last week, Curry students were working to recreate North Carolina State University’s bell tower with caulk for a presentation that they will be making there. Berry said the 3-D machine, which has made objects out of Cheez Whiz and chocolate frosting, also could have catering applications.
This summer, Berry plans to teach a group of middle school boys how to use the fabricator. He said he will use the fabricators in his elementary math and methods course next semester as a way to teach spatial reasoning and create objects that students can use to better understand math concepts.
Working with the 2D fabricator has inspired Celine to consider engineering as a career. She said she created a scale model of a bridge earlier this year, but it was fragile.
“I was wondering about the engineering to basically make it stronger,” she said.
UVa also is working with children’s classrooms in China, Indonesia and India, Bull said, leaving open the possibility that American students can collaborate on engineering projects with students from afar.

Bull said the 2-D fabricator costs “a couple hundred dollars.” The 3-D fabricator costs less than $2,000 now, but Bull said it is expected to drop to under $1,000 within the next year. The Fab@School concept also is a finalist in the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition, which is expected to announce its winners this month.