Kati Pitkänen @ FAB LAB OULU · 2018
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About me
Passionate about learning, education and education development.
I am Kati Pitkänen, Master Student in Education at the University of Oulu, Finland.
In the beginning of Fab Academy 2018, I returned home after spending a five month period as a trainee at Fab Lab Silkeborg and as a research assistant at FabLab@SCHOOLdk in Silkeborg, Denmark. I was in there to learn how do they educate and empower teachers to apply design thinking and digital fabrication in education.
Before Fab Academy, I had done some small projects for my own learning, including understanding basics of hardware, firmware and software.
I wanted to participate in Fab Academy to to get better familiarized with different digital fabrication processes to develop my knowledge, competencies, and thoughts in applying digital fabrication in education further. I am aiming to utilize this in designing further education for teachers. I want to inspire and support them in teaching 21st-century skills and competencies to students through digital fabrication learning activities.
My father is a self-learned MAKER, who does everything. His interest is in figuring out how improve functions and in personalizing things so, anything he makes looks somehow untraditional, being it a paddle boat, a house, a terrace, a motor caravan, a heating system, a bear made by a petrol chainsaw, a wood-warming 'Moomin' -sauna on the wheels, a dinosaurus formed playhouse, rocking chair and wall bars, a fountain or a windmill (just to mention a few). Maybe this is why I have been interested in making all my life, seeing that is gives a possibility to design and realise your dreams.
My first project of making a machine was The Drawing Machine I made in FabLab Silkeborg, Denmark in the winter 2017-2018.
Originally, I met Fab Labs and digital fabrication in the autumn 2016, and started to learn this new world piece by piece. The project of photoframe having underwater picture above, and LEDs fading ON and OFF varying like waves, was my first project to learn some electronics and programming in the autumn 2016:
Before getting to know Fab Labs, I have made this and that by analog. I have been interested in and tried different things in the different periods, e.g. done a number of textiles since kid, for example clothes, accessories, and home textiles.
This is a piece of our terrace fench I 2D designed and cut using jigsaw on 2015. However, it is manually designed and cut:
I started 3D designing and milling in 2009 by very manual and uneffective way (of course, it worked somehow after quite many hours). This bowl was my first bigger trial made for Father's Day present using Dremel:
My first engrawings to wood were made in 2003, at that time using old soldering iron. Then, in 2005 I got colwood pyrography pen and was able to try a little bit more detailed designs (the bird design was taken from Finnish Pentik, which I very much liked).
