The Creative Engineering Fabrication Lab (CrEF Lab) at Crefeld is the school’s makerspace, and one aspect of our experiential approach to education. CrEF Lab is a student-centered makerspace; class selections and day-to-day projects are guided by an open dialogue with students, and evolve in parallel with the growing power of technology.
The lab space features a fleet of five 3D printers; a laser cutter; a set of six permanent soldering stations; a vinyl cutter; a collection of microcontrollers and electronic components; a large collection of MIDI controllers (including Ableton PUSH2, Novation LaunchPad & LaunchKey, Native Instruments Keyboard, etc.); various Raspberry Pi and other boards; a green screen; and a class set of Macbooks loaded with maker, design & coding software (esp Adobe Creative Cloud, Blender, Game Maker 2 Studio, Ableton Live, Arduino IDE).
CrEF Lab's stand-alone curricular offerings each year include:
Six semester-long maker ed courses (for example, Tabletop Game Design, Open Studio, Video Game Design, and Skills & Projects in Blender)
A service learning group (for example, Games for Change)
Graduation by Exhibition mentorship for the Creative Expression & Technology projects
A Spring Mini Course (for example, arcade game machine construction)
Several different Friday activities
In addition, collaborations between CrEF Lab and academic classes meaningfully connect subject-area content with design, computer science, and new media to deepen student engagement to both academic work and application of modern technologies.