Hall Passes and Hallway signs for Henley

Hallpasses & Hallway Signs for Henley Middle School

I am blessed to have a lasercutter/engraver in my classroom at school. This wonderful tool allows us to design and make things on Adobe Illustrator that we can cut, engrave, sometimes assemble, and frequently decorate.

This is my How To Video that all students use to create their own "lasercuttable scribble." I purposefully make it simple and my design, well, awful. I challenge them to make something much more worthwhile if they can. The winners lasercut their designs on cardboard. I don't tell them what to design, so it's completely their choice, as long as it has a clean outline, and they engrave something cool inside it.

We use THIS kind of cardboard for this, and for all of our prototyping:

I ask students, parents, other teachers, really anyone that can, to bring cardboard in and my students cut it, using boxcutters, into 12" x 12" pieces themselves. Some of my students come up with truly surprising and wonderful designs! Check out my Instagram feed for some of the Barber Shop's greatest hits!

At this point, I am challenging my Engineering students to create 4' x 4" birch hall passes for teachers that can hang from a lanyard with a Hornet on it (our school mascot), while I simultaneously challenge my Design & Construction students to create 12" x 12" birch signs with a Hornet's News (get it?) to direct 'lost souls' around our school:

Everything has to be a vector, using my original video, so students typically trace some clipart for the decoration on each. Otherwise, the lasercutter/engraver will take HOURS to raster a picture. The student engraves/lasercuts originally on cardboard and shows the boss (me) and their consumer (the person asking for the project) for feedback, before they iterate. The iteration process can repeat several times. When it is deemed acceptable (as Tin Cup tells us, in golf and in life, perfection is unattainable), we cut/engrave on birch for the final product.

I will be posting pics of the prototypes AND final products on my Instagram and Twitter feed, but here is a sneak peek of the first 6 that I lasercut today after school:

Here they are on Adobe Illustrator!

Here is a video of the lasercutter engraving

These final products will be headed out to teachers next Orange Day!!

The hallway signs are still in progress. My students are lasercutting the final cardboard prototype that we will hang in the halls as part of the final feedback process.

The biggest roadblock I've run into is a line of students, waiting for the lasercutter (which is an awfully nice problem to have, right?) ... we will be lasercutting for WEEKS now. Lasercutting and engraving on birch takes almost 4 times as long, too! It's completely worth it to help out other teachers, teach students empathy and the design process. Next week, we move into the woodshop to build picnic tables for outdoor eating here at school during Covid!