What is the IDEA Lab?
The IDEA Lab is a Makerspace and STEM lab with IDEA standing for innovation, design, experience, and application. The lab is not a class, but a space for teachers to bring an entire class to work on project-based learning and hands-on activities. Students are able to work collaboratively and are challenged to think critically as they work through the design process and enhance their engineering skills. The lab allows students to enter with an idea and leave with a completed project. Students can also spend free time in the lab before school, during lunch, or after school. In the lab, students can explore, create new things, or improve things that already exist.
The lab is equipped with a variety of tools for project design and also features virtual and augmented reality simulators, a variety of 3D printers, a plastics recycler for 3D filament creation, a laser engraver, and coding robots. Students are able to explore their own interests, learn to use new tools and materials, and develop creative projects.
Virtual and augmented reality allow students to learn about material they've been studying in class and experience it in a virtual world. Students can take field trips around the world without leaving the physical classroom or participate in virtual dissection. The lab also features Ozobot robots, which teach students how to code by programming the robots to complete different tasks or activities, such as computing velocity from the slope of a graph, calculating the area of geometric shapes, determining the value of Pi, recreating two-dimensional visual art forms or demonstrating a behavior shown by characters in a story.