Membership > 100 members | ||
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Motto The community of proactive students always in motion. Formation April 15, 2013; 3 years ago (2013-04-15) Type Non-profit student organisation Purpose Education, Hands-on experience, Do It Yourself Location Casa del Alumno, Valencia, Spain | ||
Makers UPV is a non-profit community of students from the Universitat Politècnica of València (Valencia, Spain) founded in April 2013, whose objective is to enhance the learning experience of students by adding a practical approach based on "experiential learning", Do it yourself and the Maker Culture. Through projects, competitions and workshops taught by the students with special abilities (they acting as mentors), the community is retrofitted and grows.
Contents
- Activities
- Workshops
- Competitions
- Organisation of events
- Team projects
- Visits to companies
- Education for kids
- References
The community has gained international attention through their success in competitions, being awarded "Top Hyperloop Design Concept" and "Best Propulsion Subsystem" with project Hyperloop UPV at Hyperloop Pod Competition ( SpaceX, 2016), "Top People's Choice" with project NextVision (2014) at NASA International Space Apps Challenge as well as "Global Top 5 Best Use of Hardware" with project GoSat (2015) and Mars UPV (2016) among others.
Activities
The community has also organized some events with national impact such as BeMakerFest (October 2015), aiming to merge makers and crafter communities, as well as the Olympic Robotic Challenge (2014, 2015, 2016), a multidisciplinary educational robotics competition in which students learn to build their own robot from scratch with open-source hardware such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi (2016). In May 2016 the community held the first Spanish Hebocon, a competition for crappy robots invented by Daiju Ishikawa, which had the support of David Cuartielles, father of the open-source hardware movement. On May 2016 Makers UPV was featured in the blog of Startup Europe (European Commission).
Workshops
The workshops are taught by students who have special abilities (usually the older ones but not necessarily), they acting as mentors. With their knowledge, mentors offer other students the possibility to have a personal experience and to learn by doing. Typical workshops include: Arduino, programming, electronics, 3D printing, CAD, robotics as well as arts & crafts: cyanotype, sculpture, engraving or photography. The main purpose of the workshops are to obtain hands-on experience and skills at the University. Usually the workshops are open-sourced to the community.
Competitions
The members of the community are connected thanks to the social networks, and they share interesting contests. When a contest sounds interesting to them, they ask other members to join and multidisciplinar working groups are created for that special purpose. This has led to several awards, as stated before in List of Awards. Competitions motivate students to work hard and enable them to establish new relationships with other members of the community.
Organisation of events
The Makers UPV community has organised or co-organised several events, which include:
Also, the community has helped to organise the following events:
Finally, the community takes part in several events to spread the word around the city of Valencia:
Team projects
The community is based on collaboration, and that's why usually some members unite in several groups of interest. For example: the 3D Printing group created a 3D printer for the community, the Web Development team developed the website of Makers UPV, Hyperloop UPV, and other projects. Here some of the projects:
Visits to companies
The community also organises visits to companies to strengthen the link between students and companies. For example, the makers visited a factory to see how tablets are made, the Vandellos Nuclear Power Plant, Quaternium (makers of drones and quadcopters),a Gas Compression Facility of Endesa in Paterna as well as an aerodrome in Requena.
Education for kids
Makers UPV has a special focus on education for kids. The community has therefore partnered with several organisations to offer STEM workshops for kids, such as: