Outreach
The Innovation Lab is an excellent resource for outreach activity. Contact the Lab directors for details on organizing and hosting outreach activity in the Lab. Below, you will find a sampling of outreach activity carried out in the Lab over the years..
Class Field Trip
Innovation Lab Leader Trisha Barton hosts a class of local elementary school girls through a tour of the lab. In an enthusiastically engaging session, the students participated in a laser-cutting project and cut out take-home souvenirs.
​
Kalimba Kid Outreach Program
Headed by Morehouse Music Professor Aaron Carter-Enyi, this outreach event gathered and engaged K-12 students in the use of the lab for manufacturing and customizing working kalimbas. Potential points of exposure and new engagements include laser-cutting, use of vector graphic programs, use of hand-held power tools, soldering, art design and mechanical assembly techniques.
Spelman Student Engages Youth in Juvenile Justice Court With 3D Printing
11.8.15 - 4th-year psychology major Trisha Barton uses 3D printing to connect with the youth at the Fulton County Juvenile Justice Court and engage them in discussions about overcoming failure, success, problem solving and working to achieve their dreams. Students built original instruments and experimented with reproducing existing instruments like kalimbas.
​
Educational Research
CS Assistant Professor Jakita Thomas, through an NSF grant "SCAT - Supporting Computational Algorithmic Thinking", led a group of 7th grade girls in an Innovation Lab workshop where the students electronically decorated the face of "clock" templates that were eventually, cut with a laser cutter and outfitted with a provided clock mechanism. The students were exposed to a number of technologies in the process. At the end of the day, the 7th graders took home a customized, working clock. The assessment of the effectiveness of the hands-on exposure to STEM formed part of the research question.
