Tips and Tricks to Passing Fab Academy

Here are my thoughts on how to pass Fab Academy.

These are simple strategies, however if these are not part of how you learn they can benefit in many areas not just Fab Academy.

Listen

This sounds obvious (pun intended), however this is not how some people operate. The people in Fab Academy are the people that are getting stuff done, worldwide. Everyone can learn more if they sit back and listen and observe.

Documentation

I constantly here should I document this or that. My response is a definitive "yes." Documentation is HUGE in Fab Academy and for that matter, it is a best practice for a life-time learner. If you need to ask should I document then yes. This should not be even a question. The rule of thumb I tell my students is to document everything you learn and where you learned it. There are some persons in Fab Academy who documented well (Francisco Sanchez), my guru. One thing he said that has rang true to me is his page did not start off looking like his final page. This was an entire semester long work.

Students seem to think that the documentation needs to be there final work. It is not, it is a snapshot of your work. You modify it later. When I was working on mine I must have changed it at ten times.

I will add more on this later.

Learning

Learn something new that you want to learn about. Fab Labs are set up for personal expression. One of my favorite thoughts that has come from Neil is technology is a form or expression. Learn as many skills as you want, go ahead, it is an addictive process. Be Bold Learn something new and be bold enough to place it on a web page. The web pages are meant to be streams of consciousness, not a dissertation. Don't make it perfect, it is never going to be. Start simple then add On.

When doing projects that you have no clue to do, start small then build on. Understand the simple features first then build on. Once you complete a simple task, move onto another simple task, and another. Once you get three simple tasks done, now try to integrate them. Therefore you have a more complex item. Then complete another three simple items and try to integrate them. Then try to integrate all six simple task to create something. Last Thoughts

YOU ARE ABOUT TO GET BETTER!

About Me (Terence J Fagan)

I passed in 2014 and last year I was a remote Guru. Furthermore, I am the current Director at Fab Ed Carolina, I have help set up labs and taught in other labs throughout the US. I have been teaching Engineering and Manufacturing for 10+ years.

Original tutorial by:

  • [Terence J Fagan]e-mail: tjfagan(at)gmail.com or terence.fagan(at)cpcc.edu

  • Remixed by Eduardo Chamorro, Fab Lab Seoul 01.2017

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License