Wednesday, October 14, 2009

MakerBeam for Schools

MakerBeam:

MakerBeam is a project to build a toy and tool for the open source imagination. Based on Mini-T, a new open source standard, MakerBeam will develop a construction toy for our times: open source precision hardware equally at home doing desktop fabrication or serving as a drawbridged castle for action figures.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for schools to transition to open source hardware for relevant activities like robotics programs. Competition to provide interoperable components will drive down prices and raise quality compared to proprietary systems. Heck, schools will be able to increasingly fabricate parts themselves. But it will take a while. Ten years (btw, that's ten years in part because there are real transition costs, especially when you've got money tied up in physical components).

Via Evil Mad Scientist Labs.

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