Steve Davee: Tinker Teacher

Steve Davee is a curious person who is impressively adept at cultivating curiosity in his students. He’s a Science & Math Teacher and Technology/ Documentation Specialist for Opal School and The Center for Children’s Learning of the Portland Children’s Museum. He is the founder of CoLab, which provides tinkering camps and workshops in Portland, Oregon.

Steve’s background is in Physics and Biochemistry/Biophysics, including biomolecular research at Oregon Health & Sciences University. Among the most influential objects of Steve’s (ongoing) childhood were a Cub Scout pocket knife, his first “Dream Machine” ZX81 Computer with 1K of RAM, and countless broken skateboarding decks. Steve has had the great privilege of many successes and failures when it comes to helping to foster and encourage the natural creative genius of kids (and adults).

In addition to the photos above, he’s got extensive pictures of projects that he’s worked on with students in his CoLab Tinkering Camps and Workshops Flickr collection. Steve’s a frequent flier at Maker Faire (and is, of course, here again this year). I caught up with him several years ago, and within a few hours of first laying hands on his Maker’s Notebook he had already worked out several ideas in the Fab Lab and personalized it extensively.