Middle and high school students from schools across Hamilton County talked Wednesday with teachers about their experiences working in eLabs on the final morning of the Chattanooga Fabrication Institute.
Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences teacher Jennifer Mitchell introduced students Taylor Bowles and Jamie Hayes, both 18, who discussed how the eLab inspired them to become biomedical engineers. Projects they worked on included an architecture project for geometry class, making T-shirts and lip balms, along with helping other students use the lab.
"We had our very first project done in there, and then it was to the point where we were helping younger kids, like the elementary students," Bowles told the audience at Chattanooga Whiskey Event Hall. "Really the eLab was a place for people of any age. We had elementary students come in there, and we were helping them with different projects."
Students and teachers took to the stage to share their experiences with more than 150 teachers participating in this year's event. The third annual conference, hosted by the Public Education Foundation in partnership with Hamilton County Schools and Volkswagen, began in 2018 and took a year off last year due to COVID-19.
Student volunteers have helped teachers learn the ropes with different digital fabrication tools in the eLabs. In the first presentation, Dalewood Middle School teacher Philip Cooper talked about a conversation he had with rising eighth grade student Aaron Wheeler, 13, at the end of the conference's first day.
"We were driving home, and he said, 'I was surprised people came up to me and asked me for help; I was the only person they asked.' I said, 'That's why you're here,'" Cooper told the audience.
Each day led with a keynote speaker before educators were bused to eLabs at five schools across Hamilton County. At the eLabs, educators practiced using various tools to create music boxes ahead of a final design challenge on Wednesday.
"I think the big 'aha' is getting to watch teachers really dive into things where they don't have expertise when they start, and over the course of just two days, they move from knowing almost nothing about the tools and technology and the process to developing these really incredible things, those music boxes," Michael Stone, Public Education Foundation vice president of innovative learning, told the Times Free Press. "In that creation process, they've experienced deep learning across all kinds of different ways and categories."
In March, the Public Education Foundation received an anonymous $1 million donation to fund 15 more eLabs in the district, with seven of those labs coming to elementary schools this year. With elementary schools receiving eLabs, Hamilton County Schools elementary school teachers and students will have access to these resources.
Foundation president Dan Challener said this year's event was exciting because of the expansion to elementary schools.
"A lot of what the fab labs were doing in high school and middle school now become part of elementary, so we've completed the K-12 continuum, if you will, and have an extraordinary number of teachers, elementary school teachers, now in the network," Challener told the Times Free Press Wednesday. "It's a really exciting next step for the work."
Contact Anika Chaturvedi at achaturvedi@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6592.