Brief
We built an IoT Lab/networking studio within the iSchool in Spring 2022. The initial inspiration may be thought of as a Silicon Valley garage, an East Coast basement, a rural barn: that is, a safe place for tinkering and learning, within a community with layers of mentorship, as part of an effort to strengthen student experiences of the iSchool core course, INST 346, Technologies, Infrastructure, and Architecture.
Collaborator(s)
Dennis Frezzo, Dave Baugh, Kate Izsak, Donal Heidenblad, Graduate Assistants, Undergraduate Students, DIT
Use Cases
We initially considered 6 use cases, the first 5 of which we have preliminary positive results on in April/May 2022:
· Create a live, interactive, student-hands-on model of the Internet (see photo and diagram)
· Build portable lab kits for tabletop networking hands-on brought to various classrooms (like the small dollhouses used for criminology labs); tabletop networking that can make most classrooms into a temporary networking lab (see photo)
· a place for instructors or TAs or AMPs or students to record demos or podcasts “in situ” (“here I am at the rack which is a model for a cloud computing data center or content delivery network”) and to increase their skills
· a lending library for kits to be used in the Hornbake commons (for example, 2 -3 hour loans) and for tinkerers to come in for support (like the bike co-op)
· a basis for outreach workshops to local libraries (like a 2-hour workshop conducted by instructors on "how your home network works")
· a multiplayer game node for things like red vs. blue networking and cyber competitions
Technologies
Networking - Ethernet cables, WiFi, bluetooth, optical fiber; repeaters, switches, routers; racks modeling home networking, ISPs, internet backbone
Physical Computing - Raspberry Pi, Arduino
Electronics - multimeters, electronics kits,
Tools - small fabrication tools
IoT End devices
Join Us
Collaborators, volunteers, and anyone curious always welcome. Hours to be announced in September.