Business

A ‘gym club for nerds’

David Johns is taking a year hiatus from teaching at the University of Toronto to focus on a business venture with his family.

The electronics professor and his sons, Tim and Chris Johns, will be running hands-on workshops and classes in electronics, robotics, computers, soldering, Web design and 3D printing.

IN THE MAKING: Chris Johns and one of the lab's 3D printing machines, which is in the middle of creating a cell phone holder like the one in his hand.
IN THE MAKING: Chris Johns and one of the lab’s 3D printing machines, which is in the process of creating a cell phone holder like the one in his hand.

“We wanted to start focusing on middle school and high school students and really get them a lot more interested in technology,” Johns said from the third floor Icewire Makerspace studio on Bayview Avenue at Belsize Drive.

In addition to classes the makerspace, which is essentially a space “where people come to build things,” is for students who want to expand their science, technology, engineering and math (known by the acronym STEM) skills, entrepreneurs looking to create a prototype or develop a side project outside of work hours and hobbyists needing room or tools to work.

“You can almost think of it as a gym club for nerds,” Johns said.

MR. ROBOTO: David Johns with some of Icewire Makerspace’s robots.
MR. ROBOTO: David Johns with some of Icewire Makerspace’s robots.

Retired TDSB principal Soriana Mantini, who was most recently at David & Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute, is helping the trio understand what students aren’t learning in school and how to make the workshops and classes fit into the Ontario curriculum.

“The struggles I had running a large secondary school was we can’t keep up with the technologies and the equipment,” Mantini said. “The funding is not there, the budget is not there and the skill set and expertise isn’t there.”

Mantini envisions Icewire Makerspace as a place where students interested in pursuing science, technology and engineering can gain skills and knowledge to prepare for a university or college program, and to build on what’s taught in the classroom.

“I think it’s engaging adolescents in a different way of learning,” she said.

3D GF: Tim Johns holds up a 3D bust of his girlfriend, produced from 50 photos of her head.
3D GF: Tim Johns holds up a 3D bust of his girlfriend, produced from 50 photos of her head.

The studio was set to launch on Sept. 16.
The Johns have already used gadgets like a 3D printer to create cell phone holders and a bust of Tim’s girlfriend’s head, and have soldered a circuit board for a phone and a retroactive voice recorder.

“This is the sort of project we’d want to teach people — how to put together electronics like this,” Johns said, holding up the voice recorder. “It always would listen and when you press a button it would then store what it heard for the last minute.”