Lasers, 3-D Printers, And Robots: The New Shop Class.

DARPA is funding the creation of 1,000 Makerspaces in high schools across the country to get American kids interested in making things again.

“We have to move from an engine of bureaucracy to an engine of innovation,” said Undersecretary of Education Martha Kanter, announcing this week that at least 1,000 high schools around the country will be opening up Makerspaces over the next four years.

What is a Makerspace, you ask? “It’s a place where you get to do things,” Dale Dougherty, founder of O’Reilly Media’s Make magazine and creator of Maker Faire, told Co.Exist. “I think it’s sort of a mashup of a shop class, a computer lab, an art class, and maybe a bio lab.”