Our Field Trip to the Idea Realization Lab at Depaul University’s Loop Campus was very fun. The Lab itself was very cool and had really cool tools. One thing that I realized while at the IRL was how lucky we are at Glenbrook South. Depaul is a college and our high school Makerspace is similar and for the most part, has the same equipment and tools as a college Maker Space. DePaul had some things that we don’t have but at GBS we have a similar space which is crazy because GBS is a high school and Depaul is a college. The challenge we did in the IRL lab was very fun too. I enjoyed working with the Makey Makey and might consider using one for a future Engineering Project. My group made a small wheel that when turned left made the race car in the video game turn left, and it worked for the right side too. If we had more Materials and time we could have made something very similar to the race car games in arcades. That is crazy to think we can make something like that with simple tools. The Makey Makey is a very cool microcontroller that I look forward to using again sometime in the future. Also, we visited the Harold Washington Library which had a smaller makerspace but a lot of other cool things. I played a VR video game and also saw what a real music studio looks like. It is good to know that there are lots of fun classes and workshops for free at the library that I have access too. I thought overall it was a fun trip and a great experience.
Sean Nicgorski 