In the meantime, to help ensure that we’re serving all members of our campus community, we’re hosting “pop-up” clinics at various locations across campus. Gadget Garage staff have established a partnership with the residence hall libraries and last week (on March 30 & 31) the first pop-up clinics were held at the PAR and Allen Hall residence hall libraries. Those two residence hall libraries are once again hosting pop-up repair clinics on Wednesday, April 6 and Thursday, April 7th, respectively. Hours for the PAR clinic (Wed.) are 6-8 PM; Allen Hall clinics are 7-9 PM. Stop by for assistance with troubleshooting, diagnosing issues, and minor repair. We’re hoping to have clinics in these two residence hall libraries fairly regularly (not necessarily weekly); ask at the libraries for more information, or monitor the Gadget Garage Facebook page for announcements.
If you’re planning to either attend a pop-up clinic or to stop by the permanent location during open hours, consider filling out our Diagnostic Form to provide information on the device and problem you’re wanting to address. This will give Gadget Garage volunteers some information to help them do a bit of research before you come so they’re better prepared to assist you and use your time efficiently.
If you have other general questions, or would like to become involved with the project as a volunteer, send an email to illinigadgetgarage@gmail.com. You don’t have to be a tinkerer or technologically inclined to assist in the collaborative repair process, plus there are other project tasks to which your skills could be applied (e.g. social media, marketing, recruitment of volunteers, scheduling clinics, writing iFixit repair guides, creating resource guides for common questions/problems, etc.). Plus, although this is primarily a student project, staff and faculty who enjoy repair are also welcome to volunteer and become part of the “fixer” community here on campus! Everyone has their own expertise and strengths, and we’ll all learn from each other as we come together to keep devices in service for as long as possible.
ISTC was granted the use of Storage Building #3 by its sister survey, the Illinois Natural History Survey, and the Prairie Research Institute, to house the Illini Gadget Garage. The space is well suited to the purpose, and two classes taught by project team member Martin Wolske are currently meeting in the space (Intro to Network Systems plus Informal Learning Spaces and Pedagogies). A course taught by team member William Bullock this semester has student teams working on various operational aspects of the Illini Gadget Garage, including development of a stand alone web site, development of an identifying mark and signage, design of tool kits and storage, envisioning the layout of the space, and working on a business plan for the future financial self-sustainability of the project. At the end of the semester, student concepts will be compiled into a book for the project team for consideration, further development, and use moving forward. Students in both Professors Bullock’s and Wolske’s classes are creating online repair guides as part of the iFixit Technical Writing Project, continuing UIUC participation, which began in 2014. (iFixit has also donated over $2000 worth of tools for use in the Gadget Garage.)
Identifying mark developed by Lu Lawrence, Amanda Henderson, and Ruchita Mandhre, as part of ARTD 591/391 with Professor William Bullock.
Space–the final frontier
Storage Building #3 has proved desirable in many ways, but as the project team worked with INHS staff, Facilities & Services, and other campus units to clear, rearrange, and upgrade the space for its new purpose, we discovered that it is not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The space had previously been used as an office/lab area, and such spaces are not required to have particular types of entryways, parking, etc., as long as no one working there requires such accommodations. However, in order to open the Gadget Garage to the public, it became clear that several upgrades were necessary, including pouring an accessible parking space, a sidewalk from a nearby curb cut, creation of a new doorway closer to the planned accessible parking, and some other minor interior changes. At first our project team saw this as a minor delay; we would continue to entertain “test pilot” clientele without need for accommodation in the space and plan to renovate before winter for a grand opening for everyone once upgrades were complete. Unfortunately, estimates for all of the work required came in at over $32,000–much more than we had anticipated, and which was available to us in the SSC grant and matching funds for space considerations. By the end of October 2015, it was clear that we needed to regroup.
Plan B: Test pilots needed and ‘pop-up’ clinics planned
Because classes are already meeting in the space, and because we need somewhere to store tools and equipment already obtained, our project team has arranged with INHS to continue using Storage Building #3 as a base of operations. In the meantime, we plan to continue working with “test pilots” in this space, so student volunteers can gain experience with working with the public, checking in patrons, and logging impacts (e.g. number of devices repaired, pounds diverted from the landfill through repair, etc.). So if ADA accommodations are not something you require and you have a device that needs repair, please do visit the Illini Gadget Garage during open hours (see http://www.sustainelectronics.illinois.edu/research/gadgetgarage.cfm for more information). To ensure that all members of our campus community can benefit from and participate in the Gadget Garage, we’re planning to host “pop-up” repair clinics at various locations around campus which are already accessible. The first clinic of this kind is scheduled for December 1 at the PAR library (more details to come soon; thanks to Bradley Irwin, Graduate Research Assistant, and Residence Hall Library Graduate Assistants Hailley Fargo and Cameron Riesenberger for arranging this!). Our project team will identify other locations for such clinics, and work to raise funds for the renovation of Storage Building #3 through donations and other grants. We’re happy to report that we recently received a donation of $5000 from HOBI International, which is a great start toward making the necessary upgrades!
How you can help
Join us at the next UI Sustainable Electronics Campus Consortium meeting, at ISTC from 2:00 – 3:00 PM, Tuesday, November 17, 2015.
Bring ideas for “pop-up” locations, fundraising, and even alternative spaces (we love SB#3, but if you know of an alternative space that is already accessible, we’d like to hear about it).
If you can’t come to the consortium meeting on 11/17, but have ideas as described above, contact Joy Scrogum.
If you’d like to volunteer at a “pop-up” clinic or at the Gadget Garage itself, contact Martin Wolske or Brad Irwin.
Bring in a device for collaborative repair during open hours at Storage Builidng #3 (Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 2 to 6 p.m.), to give our repair crew some practice (and hopefully breathe new life into your gadget!).
Donate to the SEI Various Donors Fund, and specify “Illini Gadget Garage” in the “Comments or Other Instructions” field on the online donation form. Small donations add up! You or your organization will be recognized on the SEI web site, the stand alone Gadget Garage site (once it’s up and running), and receive an acknowledgement from both SEI and the UI Foundation. If you prefer to donate by check rather than via the online form, contact Joy Scrogum for instructions.
The tagline being used currently on signage at SB#3 is “Illini Gadget Garage: Repairing & Demystifying Technology for a More Just and Sustainable World.” Our campus community is working together to make this a reality. Join the campus consortium on 11/17 to be a part of it!
Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy (SDEP), a joint initiative of the Beckman Institute, the Department of Geography, and the School of Earth, Society, and Environment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has announced its events for fall 2015. The first presentation of the semester will be ‘The Israel-Palestine E-waste Commodity Chain: Findings and Reflections,’by Yaakov Garb of Ben Gurion University. The presentation will take place on Friday, August 28 at 3 PM in Room 1092 Lincoln Hall at 702 S. Wright St. in Champaign.
Abstract: Over the last several years, Yaakov Garb has worked with a small team to explore and document the informal Palestinian-Israeli entrepreneurial commodity chain through which most Israeli electronic waste has been informally transferred to a cluster of Palestinian villages and dismantled, with valuable materials (primarily copper and motherboards) shipped via Israel to destinations abroad, and the remainder crudely burned and dumped in the rural landscape. Drawing on over a hundred interviews with stakeholders in this commodity chain, extensive field observation, as well as remote sensing imagery and traffic counts, the team has constructed a portrait of this value chain (actors, prices, volumes, and dynamics) and documented its severe environmental and human health consequences. They have also worked with the local Palestinian community to develop a business model, transition strategy, and bargaining power vis-à-vis the Israeli system to enable a shift to cleaner operation while preserving livelihoods.
This talk will describe this e-waste commodity chain, its geopolitical contexts, and the results of the research and advocacy efforts of Garb’s team. It will reflect on the broader implications of this case study for thinking about informal commodity chains, their ability to move materials and rework landscapes at large scales, and what we know about them.
About the presenter: Yaakov Garb is Lecturer at Ben Gurion University and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International Studies at the Watson Institute, Brown University. He draws on environmental studies and science and technology studies (STS) in his research, teaching, and consulting on environmental and urban issues. Dr. Garb specializes in projects demanding interdisciplinary perspectives, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and a merging of analysis with advocacy for change.
Photo by Joyce Seay-Knoblauch. Pictured (left to right): William Bullock, professor of industrial design, Joy Scrogum, coordinator of the Sustainable Electronics Initiative, and Martin Wolske, research scientist and adjunct faculty member in library and information science.
As noted in this article, the Gadget Garage will open to the general campus community for repair assistance on Monday, September 14. Fall hours will be Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 2 to 6 p.m.
Professors Martin Wolske and William Bullock are also teaching courses associated with the Gadget Garage, with classes beginning this week. Professor Bullock’s class is a multidisciplinary effort with the following course objectives:
Collaborate with peers from business, design & technology in planning and startup
Experience project management, leadership and team building
Create a business and marketing plan to insure success going forward
Plan and implement new branding, advertising and wayfinding strategies
Participation in the iFixit Technical Writing Project (a unique portfolio piece)
Knowledge to create more sustainable designs and extend product life cycles
Professor Bullock is particularly interested in having students with interests in marketing and engineering participate alongside their peers from industrial design. A few seats are still available; interested students should see the course flyer and contact Professor Bullock directly with questions. Professor Wolske’s Introduction to Network Systems class will be meeting in the Gadget Garage space, and students will have opportunities to work on service learning projects associated with this project for the course.
See the Illini Gadget Garage page on the Sustainable Electronics Initiative web site for more information on the courses and the project itself, including a map of its location. General questions can be addressed to Joy Scrogum.
Photo by jfcherry on flickr. CC by 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)
Members of the UI sustainable electronics campus consortium and other interested parties are invited to attend a meeting at 11:30 AM on Wednesday, Aug. 5th at ISTC to learn more about and discuss the Illini Gadget Garage project. The project team will be meeting to discuss current progress (location, classes to be associated with the project, etc.) and next steps. Anyone interested in learning more or providing feedback is welcome to attend. Feel free to bring lunch along with you. Because this meeting will involve a group discussion, rather than formal presentations, it will not be simultaneously broadcast as a webinar.
The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center and SEI are pleased to announce that a team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign consisting of SEI coordinator Joy Scrogum (ISTC), William Bullock (Art + Design), Martin Wolske, and Jon Gant (both of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science) has recently received funding from the Student Sustainability Committee for a project entitled “Illini Gadget Garage: Education through Electronic Product Life Extension.”This seed funding will be used to launch a center where UI students and staff will bring their personal electronic devices for assistance with assessment and repair. The center will be called the Illini Gadget Garage. Using the same “collaborative repair” model employed at the campus bike shop and MakerSpace Urbana’s computer Help Desk, clients with devices in need of repair/troubleshooting will work together with Gadget Garage student staff and volunteers to perform the necessary device assessment and maintenance activities. Depending upon the situation, activities may range from guidance on how to make your computer/device run faster to actual repair and replacement of components. Continue reading “Illini Gadget Garage Project Will Extend Useful Life of Student and Staff Owned Electronics”
If you’re interested in gaining hands-on experience with this technical writing program, there’s still time to sign up for their annual technical writing symposium, this year called “Awesymposium 2015.” (There are even Lego figures on the site, so everything must surely be awesome.) The symposium takes place May 21-23 at iFixit’s offices in San Luis Obispo, CA, and is free to attend (though you’ll have to get yourself there and arrange for your own accommodations). Participants will be walked through the technical writing program with hands-on repair guide writing workshops. You can register online at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1iq3x-36j-zn-KtYEM1TBKn6r9X4WSKD7W4awrZBTqvA/viewform.
If you’re not lucky enough to be able to make it to the California coast, you can still learn more about the program on the technical writing program web site, http://edu.ifixit.com/. In particular, check out the Student Roadmap and Instructional Videos. If you’re at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and have any questions about the program, or would like to talk about how the program could be integrated into your class or registered student organization, feel free to contact me.
A new SEI fact sheet, “Teaching Sustainability with Electronics“ presents the idea that electronic devices provide a means for making sustainability and systems thinking concepts less abstract and more relatable for students. Electronics have a variety of economic, environmental, and social impacts throughout their product lifecycles, and thus provide opportunities to consider the three pillars of sustainability as they relate to everyday objects. The fact sheet also points out that the number and breadth of issues surrounding electronics make sustainable electronics discussions relevant to a multitude of subjects, beyond industrial design, computer science, and engineering. Three examples of SEI education projects are also provided. This document is geared toward formal educators at both the K-12 and university levels, as well as nonformal and informal educators interested in education for sustainability. The goal is to inspire novel approaches to introducing sustainability to students. Educators who would like advice on how to use sustainable electronics concepts in their curricula or programs should email me.
This fact sheet is meant to be the first in a series that will illustrate how sustainable electronics issues relate to various fields of study and provide suggested activities and resources for educators. Look for subsequent fact sheets in the coming months.
Meanwhile, check out the video below from the 2014 Prairie Research Institute Lightning Symposium, in which I talk about electronics as the key to making the environmental and social impacts of technology immediately relevant and compelling, in the effort to foster sustainable mindsets and personal connections to issues on a global scale.
The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI) invites you to participate in a webinar on Thursday, June 19, from 1-2 pm Central. For those of you on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus, you can join us in the Stephen J. Warner conference room at ISTC to view the presentation.
iFixit is a “global community of people helping each other repair things,” and its website (http://www.ifixit.com/) is described as the “free repair guide for everything, written by everyone.” The company fosters sustainability by promoting and facilitating repair and reuse. Brittany McCrigler, coordinator of iFixit’s Technical Writing Project (http://edu.ifixit.com/) will provide an overview and answer questions about the program, which partners with universities throughout the US to teach repair and technical writing. ISTC’s Joy Scrogum used the program as a final project option in the Spring 2014 course ENG/TE 498 “Sustainable Technology: Environmental and Social Impacts of Innovations.” The results are online guides that students can feature in their portfolios, which can help extend the useful life of products. Learn how to incorporate this unique real world exercise into existing courses or student organizations.
In a previous post, I described a special topics course (ENG/TE 498) offered in collaboration with the College of Engineering and the Technology Entrepreneur Center this past spring at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, developed and taught by IL Sustainable Technology Center/Sustainable Electronics Initiative staff members. Entitled Sustainable Technology: Environmental and Social Impacts of Innovations, the class introduced impacts associated with technology at each stage of the product life cycle (design, manufacture, consumption, and disposal/recovery). Electronic products were used as a case study and to provide the framework for discussion of complex legal, economic, social, and environmental considerations.
Students in the course ranged from undergraduates to PhD students, and represented a variety of disciplines, including industrial design, materials science, electrical and computer engineering, civil and environmental engineering, industrial and enterprise systems engineering, agricultural and biological engineering, and accountancy. We were fortunate to have some distinguished guest lecturers join us for some of our classes, including:
Craig Boswell, President, HOBI International, Inc.
Wayne Rifer, Director of Research and Solutions , EPEAT & Green Electronics Council
Kyle Wiens, CEO, iFixit & Dozuki
Emily Knox, UI professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (speaking on Makerspace Urbana)
Lynn Rubinstein, Executive Director, Northeast Recycling Council and Program Manager, State Electronics Challenge
Carol Baroudi, Global Sustainability and Compliance, Arrow Value Recovery
Jason Linnell, Executive Director, National Center for Electronics Recycling (NCER)
Sriraam Chandrasekaran, Visiting Research and Development Engineer, Illinois Sustainable Technology Center
This is the first post in a series highlighting student projects that were completed in the course. Biplab Deka (graduate student in Electrical and Computer Engineering), Kevin Lehtiniitty (undergraduate in Electrical and Computer Engineering), and Elizabeth Reuter (graduate in Industrial Design) worked together on the “ISEC project option” and came up with NEO, a concept for a computer powered by discarded smartphones, for teaching computer programming to kids. Their project abstract is as follows:
“NEO is a recycled computer powered by a discarded mobile phone that can be connected to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard in order to create a low cost desktop computer with an operating system designed to introduce computer programming to novices. We have decided to aim it toward children and teens, seeing as the age at which Americans start to use computers is getting younger. It comes in a durable and translucent case made out of recycled plastic, allowing kids to interact with NEO and see electronics reuse at work. It comes preloaded with a simple to use operating system that can have kids coding in just minutes as well as sample programs, games, and challenges that gradually become more difficult to guide them in the world of software engineering. In addition to the physical product, NEO also connects to our web based education center that can be accessed through any browser. The center provides additional tutorials, in depth explanations of software engineering, help forums, and user submitted content and competitions that gamify the entire experience.”
Check out their video below. (Note: If you’re receiving this post in your email inbox and don’t see an embedded video below, click on the permalink title of the post at the top of the email message to view the post on the SEI blog site.) It’s a pretty impressive idea, if I do say so (as their instructor, I’m admittedly a bit biased). The three plan to develop the concept, so hopefully NEO will be available sometime in the future for use in your community. If you’re interested in contacting these students to learn more, or to provide support for their product development, email me, and I will connect you with them. Or if you just like the idea, or have suggestions or questions, leave some comments for them on YouTube.
