Class 1 : Principles & Practices + Project Management
Global Lecture held 25 January, 2017. The Local work will be clumped with Week 2.
Welcome to Fab Academy!
This course, which is based on a class called How to make (almost) anything, covers a lot, is uber intense, and is a ton of fun! The curriculum which we will cover over the next several months is intimately intwined with the work and research at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms and the global FabLab Network.
Check out Neil Gershenfeld's 2006 TED Talk for more background.
One of the major parts of the FabLab Philosophy (if there is one) is the idea of community creation and sharing. The digital revolution has allowed for near-instantaneous communication between remote parts of the world. FabLabs challange us to not only share pure data but to turn that data into things -- we are then able to communicate with_physical_things around the world. While sitting next to someone and tickering together might be the gold-standard of collaborative innovation, FabLabs (connected with the Internet) help to approximate that same exchange with people and communities around the globe.
In order to make this type of collaboration possible, we have to be able to use technology to communicate and share with people around the world. There are many technologies out there to accomplish these tasks, some better for certain use cases than others (different types of projects, sizes of communities, openess, etc.). In the case of the work in Fab Academy we will be using simple websites (a combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) for communication and_Git Version Control_for collaboration/database management. While these technologies might not be emprically the best for the situation, the curriculum is set up to purposely push students to use these systems. (Git, specifically can be frustrating at times, but we are exposing it to students to have them use enterprise software which is often used on very large and complex software projects.)
Overall, the goal of this week's learning is to give all a light exposure to some important communication/sharing technologies, the full capabilities of which might be used in future projects.
~ Vipul & Henry
Evaluation
Global Criteria
Local Requirements
- Complete the on-boarding
- Register (in Lab)
- Join the Slack Team
- Get Access to the Google Drive
- Get your computer ready
- Download Git
- Get a Text Editor
- All pages in your site must:
- link back to this site
- include this note:
This course was sponsored by Godrej & Boyce Mfg. Co. Ltd.
The Plan
Since we started a week late this year, the plan of action for the group having to do with this week's content will be folded into Week 2's Plan.
Labs
Since we started a week behind, this week's Lab will be folded intoWeek 2's (Friday, 3 February, 2017 - 1800 - Hubble)