FabNewport program creating motivated learners

ABSOLUTLEY FABULOUS: Students Kaysa Shea and Kyler Dillon and East Bay Met School teacher Steve Heath work on a 3-D printing project as part of FabNewport’s efforts to promote technical knowledge and passion. / COURTESY CAMERON BLAISDELL
ABSOLUTLEY FABULOUS: Students Kaysa Shea and Kyler Dillon and East Bay Met School teacher Steve Heath work on a 3-D printing project as part of FabNewport’s efforts to promote technical knowledge and passion. / COURTESY CAMERON BLAISDELL

In a shared, 600-square-foot room in the East Bay Met School in Newport, the ambitious, business-focused education program known as FabNewport is entering its second year of operation.
Founded by Met teacher Steve Heath with grant money from The Rhode Island Foundation, as well as the van Beuren Charitable Foundation, FabNewport pairs technology specialists with tech-hungry students, and gives them real-world experience intended to make them self-motivated learners who can enter the manufacturing sector as viable, possibly even prized, workers.
The program grew from Heath’s exposure to a “fab lab” (fabrication laboratory) at AS220 in Providence about four or five years ago. Heath knew as soon as he saw the tools being used that he would return.
“I brought students up, and you could see their faces light up instantly,” Heath said. “The first tool that we used was the laser cutter. The kids liked it, and within a couple of hours we were making things that were interesting. We were etching into glass and into cardboard to make signs and to carve decorations into drinking glasses. I made a sign that I thought was pretty cool, and everyone was just like, ‘Wow, can we do that again?’ ”
The idea of fab labs originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specifically the Center for Bits and Atoms, where the operative ambition is learning “how to turn data into things, and things into data.” For the original fab lab at MIT, that can mean creating beautiful, latticed structures for use in larger engineering projects (among other things).
For FabNewport, turning data into things can mean something as simple as producing a vinyl sign.
That was just what happened when Ian Manning, owner of OrthoCore Physical Therapy in North Kingstown, admitted the need for a sign.
“I’m at a strip mall,” Manning said, “and people walk by my door all the time. Steve … mentioned that they could help me with a sign.” Manning observed that the students working on the project for FabNewport with Heath were shy initially. “They were really quiet kids, very reserved. They’re high school students – it’s not like they’re used to this kind of stuff. But once they were able to get into the work and take something that they had done on a virtual level and take it to the final stage, that gave them a sense of serious accomplishment. I get compliments on the sign all the time.”
Heath, a career educator, is in the process of handing over direction of FabNewport to Nick Logler. If Heath is the visionary, one who is great at building relationships for his organization all over Aquidneck Island and beyond, Logler has a similar skill set but adds a level of technical expertise. Logler first witnessed FabNewport at an open-community session held late in 2012. Attending were former shop teachers, ex-manufacturers, engineers, educators and artists.
“The people there were definitely very passionate about bringing an opportunity like fab lab to Newport County,” Logler said. “It was a collection of people that were unsatisfied that these types of opportunities that fab lab offers didn’t exist in the county.”
Other meetings and workshops run by FabNewport have continued a groundswell of support for the group and its ambitions. A successful series of 3D printing workshops at the International Yacht Restoration School co-hosted by FabNewport were attended by about 200 people over the course of the past summer.
The relationship with IYRS is typical of the kind of partnerships that FabNewport is building around Aquidneck Island. “We want to train community partners,” Heath said. “We’ve developed relationships at Newport Public Library, Boys & Girls Club of Newport County, the Met School (beyond just myself), and All Saints Academy. They all want to run design classes, but they don’t know who’s going to teach those classes. We want to teach their staff so that they have some of that knowledge and develop their expertise. We see ourselves as a hub for technological knowledge and passion.” The next wave of grants will be required to grow FabNewport to the extent that it can fulfill Heath’s vision fully, but in the meantime there is no slowing down for the group.
“We just spent the month of August building a remotely operated, underwater vehicle,” Logler said. “It’s a robot that’s tethered and that you steer around underwater. It was through a microgrant, and we had to have an engineer mentor. It was really myself, working with a couple of students – and when we ran into a major problem, the mentor would come in to troubleshoot.”
There are a variety of challenges that such work presents.
“One is working with students, so they’re learning,” Logler explained. “They did all the assembly. We had to pull a circuit board from another part to put it in our ROV. They broke it while they were pulling it out. They’re learning how to work with sensitive materials. That learning curve is challenging. And then the other challenging part is just getting the software to work.”
Short-term goals for FabNewport are simple. “We’re going to really zero in on 2-D and 3-D designs here with our students this fall,” Heath said. Students “are really focusing on this so that they can get internships and move forward with their careers from an early point.”
How will Heath know whether FabNewport has succeeded?
“I would say that two years down the road if you were looking at FabNewport, you would look at the relationships that have been cultivated between young people, professionals, community members, volunteers, people in business, and to look at where those relationships had led, particularly the learners, people new with the technology,” he said.
“You would want to see how the experience had affected their educational and entrepreneurial trajectory,” added Heath. “That would be our litmus test.” •

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