Over 2000 students and teachers take part in LABoral's AuLAB programme
TVLAB, an experimental TV lab, started out in 2009 and three years later it was integrated into the educational project AuLAB, bringing new lines of work and educational. Since then, over 11.290 people, students and teachers, have taken part in the educational programme of LABoral
LABoral's didactic programme AuLAB has closed its educational programme 2015-2016 with outstanding results in terms of participation: 2.005 participants, out of which 531 correspond to design, 446 to creative programming, 643 to TVLAB, 316 to the DIY Science workshop and 69 to teacher training.
These data add up to the historic of students and teachers that have been in LABoral since the beginning of the educational programme TVLAB, the experimental TV lab in 2009, that then in 2012 was extended with new training and work areas and was re-named AuLAB. In total, since then LABoral has trained 11.290 students and teachers.
Education has been one of LABoral's main focus since its inception. The centre is seen not as a place to visit as passive actors but, on the contrary rather as active actors where one can learn based on personal, collaborative and common experience.
AuLAB is an example of this. It is methodological innovation experience where work is based on projects and competency-based programming, where the effort of teachers and students is made evident. There are three lines of work: It is integrated in the formal education system and it is aimed at fostering the creative process and the critical use of technology as an educational resource in the classroom within the framework of Programa Contrato-Programa de la Dirección General de Formación Profesional, Desarrollo Curricular e Innovación Educativa of the Regional Ministry for Education of the Principality of Asturias.
The annual programme is structured around three axis: Learning through design, developed by Susanna Tesconi, that consists on manufacturing digitally designed devices in the fabLAB; TVLAB, developed by Pia Capisano and Laura Malinverni, this is a experimental TV lab to reflect upon the media and to activate creativity by making tv shows broadcasted on the Internet; and an introduction to programming where Daniel Álvarez introduces students into the basics of digital technology, so that the instead of being mere consumers of technology, they become aware of their processes and operations.
AuLAB is already well-recognised not only in Spain, but at international level, in addition to taking part in several meetings with the world's leading institutions in educational research. It should be noticed that Susanna Tesconi is a member of the Fablearn Fellowship, an initiative of the Transformative Learning Technologies Lab at Stanford University (California), a group that is creating an online repository of activities for educators of fab labs and makerspaces. The last publication about this activity can be found in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, published by Springer Internacional in 2015.