BOOKS & BOTS (The Gorge Fab-Bus)

The Books & Bots program is A05’s response to a lack of STEM accessibility in Hood River. It started when an old school bus was donated to the Hood River Valley High School Robotics Department. The idea we came up with was to transform this antiquated bus into a fresh take on a mobile fab lab which we would then drive around to our local elementaries, educating the Gorge’s children on STEM concepts.

So far the school district has provided our team with a quality school bus, ready to be transformed into a high-tech maker space. We received a generous $50k grant from the Mills-David Foundation (out of Eugene) that we are using to renovate the bus and buy high-tech equipment, like portable Makerbot 3D printers. The seats were removed, new flooring was installed, and we even printed out a vinyl sticker mosaic of different STEM topics that we plastered onto the ceiling of the bus. We ordered and installed cabinets and counter tops from Champion Tool Storage in Odell (Thank you Garin Buckles for the great deal.) In addition to the mobile 3D printers we also bought a laser cutter and vinyl cutters, which were used for creating the stickers on the ceiling and outside of the bus, and creating LED lights on the ceiling. As this paragraph demonstrates, the cost of this technology and equipment is expensive, and cost prohibitive for every school to have… thus the mobile classroom.

In the February of 2021 the outside of the bus underwent an additional redesign. Aluminum panels were mounted on the sides of the bus, which we bought from a sponsor of ours, Schlosser Machine Inc. We then designed a large mural-esque illustration of the Gorge, focused on our very own Mt. Hood and Hood River. The sticker then was printed and laminated with help from a downtown business in Hood River, Print It Sign Media. Part of this reason behind this redesign was to reflect the adaptation of the bus into a mobile library and robotics kit lending program, a change spurred on by the COVID pandemic of 2020.

The purpose of the bus is to engage students in integrated technology and design at an early age with hands on projects in science, engineering, math, and the arts. More complex projects like ukuleles, robotics, and 3D printed race cars are what we are looking to achieve in the future. A secondary use of the bus will be to provide camps in the summer and afterschool activities for kids across the Gorge- and fundraising at events such as the county fair and harvest fest.

A local news article from early in the Fab Bus’s life HERE

STEM BUS GALLERY