Fab Lab, Chromebooks At Raritan HS In Hazlet

This post was submitted by the Hazlet School District:

The Hazlet Township Public School District continues to meet their mission of “Educating our students...to achieve their maximum potential” through preparing them to be 21st Century Learners.

While students in all of the District’s eight schools returned to their buildings this year to find additional Chromebooks, iPads and other technology devices to support their educational learning environment, the nearly 1,000 high school students attending Raritan High School began their school year with their own district­ issued Chromebook. Additionally, 150 students will be taking a class in the new ultra-modern Fabrication Lab.

The Hazlet Township Board of Education as part of the 2015­16 budget approved entering into a lease purchase agreement to acquire Chromebooks for all of the students at Raritan High School. The staff members were issued the devices in June to begin working with them over the summer. The District then held four in-­service dates for staff training on the incorporation of the Chromebooks into everyday learning. Students were able to come in over the summer to sign out their device before school started.

“Putting these devices in the hands of all of our staff and students has allowed us to change the educational environment in our school,” said William Kolibas, president of the Board of Education.

“We had six carts of Chromebooks in the high school last year and our teachers were always trying to get them for their classes. Now every student has one every day. The potential for these devices to advance the learning in our school is limitless,” said Dr. Bernard F. Bragen, Jr., Superintendent of Schools.

The Technology Standards for students in grades P-­12 focus on two key areas: educational technology and technology education, engineering and design.

In a push to increase the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) offerings at Raritan High School these two standards stood in the forefront. How can students best use digital tools to access, manage, evaluate and synthesize information in order to solve problems individually and collaboratively? Where can students develop an understanding of technology and engineering as they relate to the individual, global society, and the environment? The idea emerged to create a space that utilizes math, science and technical knowledge while preparing our students to learn valuable college and career readiness skills like problem solving, organization and collaborating as a team.

During the summer of 2015, the Raritan High School woodshop received a complete overall and was converted into a state­-of­-the­-art Fabrication Lab. As part of the annual facilities budget the District invested almost $250,000 in this unique educational environment.

“The students are extremely excited about this new offering and all sections of the class are completely filled for this school year,” said Michael Miller, District Supervisor of Science.

To prepare for this new adventure the classroom was completely gutted, heating and ventilation systems were upgraded, floors were repaired and replaced, and proper electric, lighting and cabinets were installed. The cutting­edge equipment in the classroom includes 25 laptop computers, a welding booth, 3­ D printers, a compact milling machine, plasma and vinyl cutters, a CNC carving machine, a drill press, lathes, air compressors, sanders, saws and other equipment recycled from the woodshop and other hands­on tools.

The Educational Technology Department in Raritan High consists of two teachers, Christopher Berg and Katherine Grasso, who developed the “Engineering & Manufacturing Processes” curriculum for the new lab.

The new curriculum shifts the focus from a hands­-on to a hands-­on-­minds-­on pathway where students take a purposeful approach to designing solutions to problems. The course is aligned to branches of engineering and requires specific content knowledge relating to science and math. Students will design projects that involve inquiry and focusing on a problem or a need that they must research and create, then construct a prototype of their solution. The use of STEM practices in a Technology Education classroom further supports science content being taught and reinforces skills in mathematics classrooms. Collaboration between technology educators and the math and science departments will further advance Hazlet’s pursuit of academic excellence.

The “Fab Lab” concept was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been expanded nationwide.

Members of the Board of Education attended a workshop on fabrication labs or makerspaces at last year’s NJ School Boards Convention after interest was expressed by the District and School Administration.

“After seeing the possibilities last year and discussing it numerous times during our budget meetings, we knew it was something we needed to provide to our students to prepare them to be 21st Century Learners,” said Kolibas.

Staff members from the high school and central office researched and toured numerous sites throughout the state before finalizing the design for this space.

Many may ask, “What is a fabrication lab and why does Raritan High School need one?” A Fab Lab (or fabrication laboratory) is a small­-scale workshop offering personal digital fabrication – true project­-based learning. Students and teachers can create new products using fab lab equipment. Fab Labs are equipped with an array of flexible computer controlled tools and various materials, with the aim to make “almost anything.”

The Fab Lab program was started in the Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a collaboration between the Grassroots Invention Group and the Center for Bits and Atoms, broadly exploring how a community can be powered by technology at the grassroots level. The fab lab concept also grew out of a popular class at MIT named “How to Make (Almost) Anything.”

Fab labs have spread from inner­-city Boston to rural India, from South Africa to Norway, and now to the Hazlet Township Public Schools. Activities in fab labs range from technological empowerment to peer­to­peer project­based technical training to local problem­solving, from small­scale high­tech business incubation to grass­roots research. Projects being developed and produced in fab labs include solar and wind­ powered turbines, thin­client computers and wireless data networks, analytical instrumentation for agriculture and healthcare, custom housing, and rapid­prototyping of machines.

Raritan’s new fabrication lab is an expansion of the technologically infused education supporting their developing technology and STEM academies. National educators have closely watched the fab lab experiment, and have determined that such a program has helped raise students’ math test scores and interest in science and STEM related fields.

“With the support of the Board of Education, the Hazlet Township Public Schools intends to utilize this lab as another stepping stone in meeting the Mission of our District,” said Bragen.