Projects

In 2000, when Paulo Blikstein was a student of Prof. Neil Gershenfeld’s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he attended a very popular course, “How to make (almost) anything.” Gershenfeld intended to give students the opportunity to learn different types of digital fabrication equipment. The course’s success encouraged Gershenfeld to create the first FabLab, which provided access to digital equipment to a greater number of students, and became the first in an ever-growing network of FabLabs spread all over the world.

Since 2004, as part of his doctoral work, Blikstein started to use digital fabrication for educational design. In 2008, upon moving to Stanford as a faculty member, Blikstein created the first-ever fab lab at a school of education. In 2010, he started the FabLearn Labs project (formerly known as the FabLab@School project) – an affordable digital fabrication workshop in schools, a permanent place for invention and creation, where tools for the physical creation of objects (the atoms) are available alongside digital programming tools (the bits). The first fablab@school was installed in Moscow in 2011 and the first in the United States was inaugurated in 2012 at the Castilleja School in Palo Alto.

Within the scope of the project, Blikstein’s lab has developed inexpensive tools, curricula, and projects, as well as a comprehensive professional development program for teachers. There are FabLearn Labs schools installations currently in Denmark, Australia, Russia, Mexico, Spain, United States. Further labs are planned in Brazil, Poland and Finland.

Ten years ago, a single robotics kit could cost the equivalent of a teachers’ monthly salary. Not anymore. Co-designed with Arnan Sipitakiat while students at MIT, and still undergoing development of ever more stable and robust versions, the GoGo Board is a fundamental building block for Blikstein’s projects. It not only costs about five times less than most commercial products, but also can be assembled locally with components found in local stores.

For a decade now, it has been found in workshops across the world, including Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, Portugal, China, and the United States. There are currently thousands of GoGo boards in schools worldwide. Local assembly is possible with simple equipment, there are multiple modes of acquisition (for a single student or a school system) and, last but not least, it is open-source.

Paulo Blikstein is also a co-founder and executive director of the Lemann Center for Educational Innovation in Brazil , a 10-year initiative established in 2011. The Center trains researchers and professors, fosters professional development of Brazilian educators, researches on novel educational policies and new technologies for learning, and generates innovative projects intended to improve education in Brazil.

It focuses on developing new approaches to improving learning in Brazilian public schools, particularly for low-income students, and to creating new kinds of learning opportunities inside and outside the public school system.

In progress

In progress