Fabstory - SCOPES Digital Fabrication
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Lesson Details

Subjects
Arts, Technology, Theatre
Age Ranges
11-14
Fab Tools
laser cutter, 2D Design concepts
Standards
Fab-Fabrication.1, Fab-Design.1
Author
Fab Lab Yucatán
Additional Contributors
Luis Mayorga, Rodrigo Gamboa, Oscar Diaz, Lucía Nava

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Author

Fab Lab Yucatán
Fab Lab Yucatán
Fablab manager
Fab lab Yucatán, which is created from the opportunity to participate in a social change and an open economic model that places innovation as the engine of social transformation, is the first open laboratory for research, experimentation and technological development… Read More

Summary

  1. Make the Fabstory Blocks
  2. Initial story. Tell to the participants an initial story using the Fabstory blocks
  3. Technique 1: What would happen if…. On a brainstorming ask 3 questions than starts with: What would happen if…?
  4. Reflection on Technique 1. With all the group, make a reflection about the nature of this kind of questions
  5. Story constructions.
  6. Explanation. We gonna use two different methods to create stories and in some parts of the activity we are going to reflect about them and finally they are going to share the stories with all of us
  7. Technology 1: White paper and pencil
  8. Technology 2: Fabstory blocks.
  9. Share the stories.
  10. Final reflection. Observe the materials they use on the creation of stories and reflect about how do they think they were made, after some participants reflections, share some information about the Fab Labs and similar concepts
  11. Close the activity. Thanks to everyone for their participation with your personal style.

 

What You'll Need

  • This guide
  • Fabstory blocks design(15 cards for every group of participants is the suggestion)
  • Laser cutter
  • 3mm Cardboard or MDF (The cards are small, so maybe you can reuse some residual materials from the Fab Lab)
  • White paper (They can come from reused source) (2 per team of participants)
  • Pencils and/or pens (2 per team of participants)

Optional

  • Personalized presentation based on this Presentation template, computer and projector (optional)
  • Some acoustic instruments
  • Music player
  • Other storytelling helpers

 

Lesson Materials

The Instructions

Make the Fabstory Blocks

On a previous moment or session, if it is possible with all participants of the workshop, go to the laser cutter and make the Fabstory blocks, try to generate some questions about the process.

  1. Download, modify if you want, the fabstory blocks file, you can find them here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JK-HIr2Y-zP3WuGxYhneMtlprc-aDb-T
  2. Laser cut the final design in the quantities you need (Take care of safety and health preacutions)
  3. While the machine is cuting the materials, think together about the processes involved, with some questions like:
  4.  how the laser cutter works?
  5. how was the file designed and translated to machine language?
  6. if it is possible to modify the file?
  7. what else you can make or design?
  8. Keep in mind try not to give the answers you know, instead of that try to they gave what they think are the answers and why they think that is the answer, and what new questions are generated
  9. Complement this session with a social activity at the end, it can be a meal, an art show or a game
  10. Store the blocks and prepare for the workshop

Initial story

Tell to the participants an initial story using the Fabstory blocks, you can be helped by other people, acoustic or digital music and sounds, or other objects.

  1. Prepare previously an story with the blocks you made in the previous step, and using the same steps of the workshop
  2. Tell the story to the participants. You can be helped by someone, or musical instruments ,audio records or other objects.

Technique 1: What would happen if….

On a brainstorming ask 3 questions than starts with: What would happen if…?

  1. On a brainstorming ask 3 questions than starts with: What would happen if…? Here are some examples, but if you want more examples, just think on any film that you have watched and try to find what is the what would happen if behind the story.
  2. … lost our memories?
  3. … meet life from other planets?
  4. … dive to the bottom of the ocean?

Reflection on Technique 1

With all the group, make a reflection about the nature of the What would happen if... questions.

  1. With all the group, make a reflection about the nature of this kind of questions. Some ideas are:
  2. what do these questions have in common?
  3. what do they create?
  4. how the questions always starts and finish?
  5. what other same-type of question you can make?
  6. which one is your favorite?
  7. do you remember an experience, a book or a movie that match with one of theses questions?
  8. Close the reflection asking them: does this question helps to create stories?

 

Story constructions

Main activitie of the lesson. Use two different technologies to create stories, reflect about them and finally share the stories with all the group.

  1. Explanation. Explain the activitie. We going to use two different technologies to create stories and in some parts of the activity we gonna reflect about them.
  2. Groups formation (optional). Consider make groups by the method you choose, it depends on the number of participants, the number of fabstory blocks you have, and obviously the nature of the group and the infrastructure of the space. Do they already know each other? Do they have tables?
  3. Technology 1: White paper and pencil. Ask them: If i give you a white paper and a pencil and i ask you to create a (Choose a topic or challenge, for example: Science fiction) story, how much time will take you? have you ever tried this before? how easy it is? Let’s try it. Give to every group a white paper, a pencil and a certain time (for example 10 minutes) to create a story. Then ask to them. Was it easy? Was it fun? What would you do to make this process better, easier or popular? the people use to create stories in this way? what other strategies do they use?

  1. Technology 2: Fabstory blocks. Now we are going to create a story like the one you saw at the beginning, using instead of paper and pencils, the Fabstory blocks. Distribute the blocks equitably on all the groups and ask them to create another (topic you choose before (Science fiction)) story in the same time that the last activity (for example 10 minutes).