Co.Lab self-serve workshops

Co.Lab self-serve workshops have a unified purpose: to teach students how to collaborate to solve problems, and to share their knowledge with others as contributions. Empowering teachers and parents by letting them host workshops of their own also furthers Red Hat’s mission to be the catalyst in communities of customers, contributors, and partners creating better technology the open source way.

Build your own Co.Lab workshop

Creating your own Co.Lab workshop is a unique way to teach kids the immense power of working together to solve a problem using open source hardware—and it doesn’t take much planning on your part. With our do-it-yourself kits and a set of guidelines, you can quickly build an interactive event that empowers students to learn, create, and share their knowledge with others.

Get started with a Co.Lab kit

Tips for planning your workshop

Hosting a workshop is simple. With each kit, you’ll get an overview of the project, set of instructions, various checklists, and a how-to video with experiments to guide you through it yourself. Then, once you’ve built and tested it, you can lead others through the process. Just use this handy checklist to get started.

Choose and purchase your kit on SparkFun here.
Determine a time and date for your workshop.
Send invitations to parents of students
(between 10 and 12 students per workshop is best).
Order kits at least 2 weeks before the workshop.
Follow the video or written tutorial that accompanies the kit.
Host your workshop to help empower the next generation of open source leaders.

Did you know? Co.Lab began with Red Hat hosting workshops.

In fact, Co.Lab started with a multi-day event in 2017 in Boston, where participants built and programmed Raspberry Pi digital cameras—and then took those cameras around the city to capture images that represented lines of a poem. We traveled across the globe from New York to Colorado, Minneapolis to Madrid, and London to Buenos Aires—hosting workshops to show students the amazing things that can happen when people work together to solve problems.

Where we went

Astoria, NY

Bogota, Colombia

Boston, MA

Boulder, CO

Brno, Czech Republic

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Chicago, IL

Dubai, UAE

Germany

Houston, TX

Kadapa, India

London, UK

Milwaukee, WI

Minneapolis, MN

New York, NY

Raleigh, NC

Santiago, Chile

Seattle, WA

Seoul, Korea

Spain

Washington, DC

See more Co.Lab experiences

Co.Lab has reached students across the globe, demonstrating the power of collaboration through open source. Here’s a sampling of past workshops.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service

Students throughout the U.S. built a light-up greeting card using copper tape, LEDs, and a coin cell battery during the annual day of service, and received an extra LED card to share what they learned with others.

Minneapolis interactive workshop

The in-person workshop let Franklin Middle School students build paper circuitry and special effects with copper tape and microcontrollers to bring a story by author Lauren Sabel to life using light, sound, motion, and art.

See photos from past workshops