On the airplane, ready to begin our trip!
Fab Stewards
Ralik John,
Aaliyah Malone,
Samuel Andre
and James MacGlashing
travel to Fairbanks, Alaska to demonstrate and teach about the fabrication laboratory at the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention and the Effie Kokrine Charter School.
To prepare for the trip, the fab stewards met with students from the Effie Kokrine Charter School via Skype (online video conference) and gave them a long-distance lesson on the basics of Inkscape tools that they will use in the Fab Lab.
Ralik also built a 3D printer, the MakerBot, which we had to pack up and take on the 14 hour plane trip. Here is Ralik John with the MakerBot at SETC:
Saturday 16 October 2010
14 hours travelling by plane. We checked in at 10:45am Boston time. It was Aaliyah's first airplane trip and she LOVED it. Here's a picture going over what we think was the Rocky Mountains:
After stopping in Chicago and Seattle, we finally landed in Fairbanks at nearly 2am Boston time. Samuel and Ralik pose in front of our first polar bear siting in the Fairbanks airport.
Sunday 17 October 2010
Sunday we got up late, explored the hotel, did some homework and went and got supplies and postcards to send to our families. Here's the hotel:
Supplies included a box of 36 corndogs which just about filled Ralik, James and Samuel's refridgerator!
It was cold, but James was ready with a serious hat!
Monday 18 October 2010
We met the University of Illinois team for breakfast at the Princess Fairbanks Motel. Breakfast included reindeer sausage, which everyone is holding up in this photo!
There was a fireplace in the hotel where we ate breakfast.
We visited the Effie Kokrine Charter School, which is organized around Native Alaskan principles. Here are the Fab Stewards with Susan McCullough. It started snowing when we were at the school.
The school is named after Effie Kokrine, a Native Elder who used to travel around to local schools with her blue suitcase filled with traditional crafts and items. She would share traditional culture through storytelling. Here are two cases from the school filled with some of the things she used to share:
Then, we went to the Carlton Convention Center to begin to set up the Fab Lab:
All the Fab Lab equipment and supplies were delivered to our heated tent that sits right next to the Convention Center:
Everyone pitched in to get things unpacked, cataloged and set up on tables.
The MakerBot 3D Printer survived the airplane ride across the country with great success and Ralik John set it up:
After setting up the computers and the big screen video cam that will broadcast our demonstrations across the country to the National Science Foundation, Ralik got the vinylcutter and the Modela mini-mill working. Then we called it a day, headed back to the hotel for a swim in the pool and a soak in the hot tub, homework and bed. Aaliyah says "it's really cold."
Tuesday 19 October 2010
The front page of the Daily News - Miner, Fairbank's local newspaper, carried an article about the opening of the Elders-Youth part of the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention.
Although we did not get to hear Eliza speak (this part of the conference is limited to elders and youth), the article was very interesting.
Wednesday 20 October - Friday 21 October 2010 AFN Convention
Here is Allison Bland's iMovie about our experience!