Lab Gives Students View of the Future

Eleven-year-old Trevor Waters can make a robot do his bidding. So can scores of other students who are getting an early initiation into the 21st century world of manufacturing technology in a mobile lab at Ernest Lawrence Middle School in Chatsworth.

As part of a push to educate youngsters in science and technology, the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley brought the $400,000 Manufacturing Technologies Laboratory to the school for a three-month visit. Students take turns commanding the lab’s robotic devices or making plexiglass fobs to hang on keys or backpack zippers.

Working with robots using computers and making such products get students like Trevor thinking about careers in technology.

“Almost all jobs involve technology,” said Trevor, who wants to be a veterinarian.

For others, like 12-year-old Jeffrey Redmond, working in the lab afforded the simple pleasure of admiring a job well done.

“You could use [the fob] for a key chain or for a backpack. But I’ll probably have it on me so I can look at it a lot,” said Jeffrey, who stared at a small plaque with his name that he made on a mill-like machine.

The purpose of bringing the 36-foot trailer to schools is to increase academic performance through hands-on projects, said Brenda Winters, an assistant principal. The school, named after a nuclear physicist, has done well in technology-oriented competitions in the past, she said on Monday.

Learning technology now, at an early age, could yield high-paying jobs for these students in the future, said Gloria Pollack, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Communications, one of the sponsors of the effort.

“We hire a lot of people, and we want them to be technologically astute,” said Pollack, who announced that Time Warner would soon wire Lawrence Middle School to the Internet. “Children in schools must learn the latest in technology, because that’s where the jobs are.”

The Economic Alliance has plans for traveling biomedical, plastics, communication and media laboratories in the future, said Kenn Phillips, the organization’s director of education and work force development.

The current laboratory will also be used for job training for young adults and in a summer program for at-risk youths, Phillips said.