Stanford Graduate School of Education's FabLab@School program, a network of educational digital fabrication labs with cutting-edge technology for design and construction, is planning to conduct research on how the new Makerspaces in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park affect students.
On Monday mornings during recess at Brentwood Academy in East Palo Alto, kindergarteners can be found in a room writing code or 3-D printing their names.
That’s all because the Ravenswood City School District is ramping up its efforts to bring science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, education to its population. Menlo Park-based Facebook Inc.and other groups are helping the district continue the Ravenswood Makerspace Collaborative, which gives students in the district — 99 percent of whom qualify for free or discounted lunches — opportunities to explore some of the most in-demand STEM fields in Silicon Valley.
“The most positive thing is they’re excited about learning and also the collaboration going on,” said the district’s STEM coordinator Robert Pronovost, a former teacher and Stanford University graduate, who had the idea of bringing Makerspaces to public schools in East Palo Alto and eastern Menlo Park. “Every student is able to come in here.”
His initiative has grown with the help of the Ravenswood Education Foundation and Stanford’s Transformative Technologies Lab. It encourages students of all levels — 25-30 at a time with mentors present — to learn about robotics through Dash and Dot coding robots, and computer science and coding through Code.org. The lab came to the kindergarten through fifth-grade Brentwood this past fall. It was piloted at Los Robles Dual Immersion Magnet Academy about a year and a half ago.
Robert Pronovost received his master's degree from Stanford Teacher Education Program in 2007.
