We are actively recruiting students 4th-8th grade to form 2 competition teams for the 2024-2025 VEX IQ season. Please contact us if you want to participate.
Goal
The maker space is designed to further support the growth of our students by providing activities that encourage logical thinking, problem solving, fine motor skills, learning engineering subjects (e.g. artificial intelligence, programming, electronic circuit design) and in general a diy and fixing attitude.
We support both small team projects as well as individual projects.
The focus is on projects incrementally more difficult but always chosen by the students. The projects will include electronic/electrical, mechanical and software aspects in different proportions. Legos, for example, can be used to prototype mechanical components while Arduino allows the students to use a wide array of sensors and actuators. Finally coding brings it all together into a functional prototype.
We strive to teach the engineering method to go from idea to prototype using an immersive project-based approach driven by the students and supported by us.
Projects will be regularly showcased on our website and youtube channels, and friendly competitions will be added over time. We will encourage participation at local events supporting young makers.
When
We offer daily lessons from 4:15 pm to 7 pm during weekdays and 10 am to 7 pm during weekends. The minimum class duration is 1 hour. We offer both daily a la carte and semester based enrollment. Contact us if you have any questions. Thank you.
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Learn to use the Arduino microcontroller and build simple custom electronic circuits to achieve your goals.
We will prototype using breadboards and basic components and move to circuit design for more advanced students
We also offer raspberry pi based robotics via an interface that enables controlling the LEGO spike line of motors and sensors with a raspberry pi.
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Similar to our electronic topic but leveraging the plug-n-play nature and simpler programming interface of Lego SPIKE to provide an easier introduction to making.
Legos can be used as a step of the iterative design (e.g. an initial prototype version)
For novice makers we will initially focus on simpler single-day projects using the various sensors and actuators provided in the Lego kits.For more advanced builders, we can use raspberry pi boards to control the LEGO actuators and sensors.
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This topic aims at introducing programming as a tool for makers. Microprocessors are used to automate many tasks in DIY projects and therefore programming is a skill often needed to complete a build.
The goal would be to teach programming as a part of a combined hardware-software project. However, based on the maker’s preferences and specific project, the hardware component might be very small or not present at all. -
We are adding to our offering the VEX IQ robotics system. This will support teams of students that want to participate in the VEX robotics competitions.
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The onsite 3D printer enables us to teach 3D modelling and to open our students to more building opportunities by designing and printing custom parts.
Contact Us
If you are interested in exploring the engineer within you, drop us a message, ask for a trial lesson!
Meet our teachers
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Fabrizio Morbini
Fabrizio Morbini has worked in software engineering and artificial intelligence since the early 2000s. In 2009 he obtained a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Rochester in NY, his undergraduate degree was in electronics and computer science from the University of Brescia in Italy. He helped found the robotics club at the University of Rochester and is passionate about teaching engineering.
In his free time he likes to explore nature, cook, calisthenics, gardening and reading.