“The STEAM path”:building a Community of Practice for local schools around STEAM and Digital Fabrication

Abstract With this poster, we present our goals, methodology and initial findings of the first 7 months of a pilot aiming to integrate STEAM education in formal education by exploiting digital fabrication tools and processes. The success of the pilot is strongly bound to the development of a Community of Practice formed by diverse local stakeholders including teachers, school principals, education administration representatives, researchers and Fab Lab instructors. Six local schools participated in the first stage of the pilot. We claim that this poster will set the ground for a discussion on how to integrate STEAM and digital fabrication procedures in formal learning environments. We expect our experience could serve as an inspiration for similar projects all around Europe