Fab Lab Summer Camp and Local Collaboration

An amazing local collaboration resulted in access to a high tech summer camp for Urbana kids. From the News-Gazette Wednesday:

Grant lets C-U Fab Lab bring cutting-edge summer camp to Urbana kids
...
A cutting-edge summer camp offers chances to play "Minecraft," program computers and use 3-D printers. But, often, chances like this come with a price tag.

Jeff Ginger knows. As the director of Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab — short for fabrication laboratory — he's watched as his University of Illinois-sponsored camps draw a similar able-to-pay crowd every summer.

"One of the downsides of these camps is that they tend to be kids that are home-schooled or kids that have access to the university," he said. "We wanted to get out of the university and into other populations."

This year, Ginger and other Fab Lab affiliates didn't go very far: They took their programming to the Urbana Neighborhood Connections Center and organized two, two-week summer camps around space and computer technology...

Since the camp's equipment — computers, 3-D printers and a router, among other items — came from an Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband grant, all of it will remain at UNCC after the camps formally end, meaning Daniels and other kids can pick up right where they left off.

Ginger would like to see the camps' programming expand into classrooms, but noted there are all kinds of "structural barriers," like a class having 30 students and one teacher, or only a half-hour to try to implement technology like Champaign-Urbana Fab Lab offers. If it can't expand via classroom, Ginger said after-school and summer sites become integral for accessibility...

For Ginger, the summer camps represent at least two things. First is the power of local collaboration.

"Janice Mitchell (the director of UNCC) provided the space and UC2B provided the grant," he said. "It wasn't entirely just the university coming in and setting this up."

And second, responsiveness to what kids actually want.

More at the full article here. More information about the Urbana Neighborhood Connections Center here, the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab here, and Urbana Champaign Big Broadband here.