Students at The Lovett School can hone their engineering and problem-solving skills this year in what the school calls a “makerspace,” complete with 3D printers and a laser cutter.
Laura Deisley, director of strategic innovation at Lovett, said the makerspace is similar to a shop class. “The idea and notion of the word makerspace is very much about a place that is not a discreet course or classroom,” she said. “A space where people can come together and comfortably tinker and fail and try again.”
Students can use the tools in the makerspace for projects inside and outside the classroom. Deisley said that last year a physics class designed and created windmill blades with a 3D printer as students learned about wind power.
The makerspace is primarily for the upper school, but the lower and middle schools have what Deisley called “innovation labs” with lower-level equipment such as Legos.
All this equipment will further develop Lovett’s computer science program, and the makerspace’s emphasis on design combines disciplines such as science, math and art for an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving.
“We are eager to have our individual disciplines like science and math and the technology tracks have opportunities to come together in project-based learning,” said Deisley. “It allows [students] to exercise their creativity and imagination as well as a different means of problem solving.”
Lovett is a private school for kindergarten through 12th grade, located on Paces Ferry Road in Atlanta.
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