# Week 3

# Why digital fabrication in education? Pedagogical theories and socio-emotional learning.

# Summary and core material

# Assignment

Design and cut with the laser cutter an object that can be used in your classroom (e.g. to support any of your lessons, or as part of your infrastucture)
Document briefly the process in your portfolio. Indicate which were the main challenges.
Include two pictures of the final object (hero shot) and explain how are you planning to use it
Answer the following reflection questions:
- Think on one or two educational activities in which you could integrate laser cutting at some stage of the activity. Explain briefly the activity. Do not forget to clear indicate the learning outcomes.
- Reflect on your own practice. When you prepare a lesson activity what are the things that you take into consideration? What are the critical aspects? What additional aspects do you need to take into consideration if you utilize digital fabrication processes?
- Reflect on your past educational activities. How have you considered Socio-Emotional learning (or soft-skills) when preparing the activities? How do you integrate these soft-skills in your education? Could you provide some concrete examples? How have changed your perspective on socio-emotional learning / soft-skill / horizontal competences after this lecture.

# Tasks in the Fab Lab

Go a bit deeper in understanding vector graphics (e.g. trace bitmaps, text-to-path, boolean operations)
Prepare a 2D design to be laser cut: e.g. line colors and thickness.
Understand main concepts of laser cutting (e.g. difference between engraving, rastering and cutting)
Prepare a laser cutter to cut depending on material and process (e.g. adjusting speed, power, frequency, focus distance)

# Asynchronous content

# Lesson plan

Tips to create a lesson plan ->TBD

# Reflective practice

Reflective practice is learning through and from experience towards gaining new insights of self and practice as popular publication by Finlay (opens new window) states.

Reflective practice brings lotf os benefits to the development of the teacher. Cambridge communication has an interesting publication summarizing advantages, methods and theoretical background. Getting started with Reflective Practice (opens new window).

For those more interested in the academic side, there are lot of research in the field. You can have a look to:

-Reflective practices: a means to teacher development (opens new window)

-Becoming a teacher: encouraging development of teacher identity through reflective practice (opens new window)

# Gamification

Some ideas and gamification concepts: Gamification presentation (opens new window)

# Technical guides and tutorials

# More on 2D Design

Tutorial that introduce boolean operations and other operations with paths. Inkscape path tutorial (opens new window)

# Laser cutting tutorials

What are the things you need to take into consideration to prepare a file for laser cutting? There is not a general answer because it depends a lot on your machine. This document summarize the main aspects you need to consider providing an example using the Epilog Laser Mini. Preparing your files for laser cutting (opens new window)
Miscellaneous content related to the laser cutter including materials that can be laser cut, how to design joints, introduction to kerf, what are living hinges and some practical considerations to clean the laser. Using the laser cutter (opens new window)
Basics and fundamentals on LASER cutting: How laser cutter works (opens new window)
General workflow tutorial, focus on Epilog machines. In this video you can see the whole process and main aspects you need to consider when using the laser cutter in your makerspace/fablab: Laser cutter general workflow (opens new window)
Living hinges enables bending different set of materials (e.g. wood, cardboard) by cutting certain patterns with the laser cutter. There are multiple patterns available in Internet. The following file contains a curated set of living hinge patterns that you can apply to your designs. Living hinge patterns examples (opens new window)

Next we are including a curated list of tutorials on laser cutters. Please, if you are using a different laser cut, and you have good material, share it with others.

# Epilog laser cutters

Epilog is one of the brands that you can see more often in Fab Labs. Here is a curated list of important videos to watch:

Quick start tutorial on using Epilog Fusion Pro / Fusion 2M. Video format (opens new window) and Website tutorial (opens new window)
Laser and engraving with Epilog laser cutter. Workflow and settings. Video format (opens new window)

# XTool P2 laser

# Additional material

TedX Talk: Gary Stager, "Seymour Papert- the inventor of everything" (opens new window) In this TEDx talk, Gary Stager, curator of dailypapert.com (and co-author of Invent to Learn) will share a lightning fast introduction to the wit, wisdom, and powerful ideas of Seymour Papert; one of the greatest educators of the past half century.

Short presentation summarizing main aspects on Socio-Emotional Learning: Socio Emotional Learning Summary (opens new window)