By Lynne Marie S., Parent
Students Explore The World of 3-D Printing
“3D Printing? Is that even a thing?,” you might ask yourself, if you are not an engineer, not a technophile, or maybe not an informed adult (speaking only for myself of course).
Well, as it turns out our upper grade students are finding out it is “a thing,” and one with perhaps endless possibilities. Through relatively inexpensive plastic filament, our 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders are generating designs and physical objects and concepts to tickle the brain and tease the imagination.
Through School Site funds and Teacher Roberta’s participation in a technology education course, Village has acquired two 3D printers. With this new equipment Village is offering a brand new center, “3D Printing,” facilitated by four parent volunteers, none of whom had prior 3D printing experience. Thanks to Alex, Debbie, Ben, and Carol, who also learned from the tinkercad.com site, students are supported in their design and printing process.
Students work on their classroom chromebooks using the website Tinkercad.com. The early classes focus on learning basic principles and concepts of 3D design and printing, and during the rest of the course students are free to “tinker,” or conceive, design, re-imagine, re-design, and print.
One challenge in teaching this course is accommodating the time it takes to actually print an object. To this end, our parent volunteers spend time outside of the teaching of the course to print students’ visions, not unlike the ceramics center in that way. Another challenge for some students is learning to work effectively with a mouse vs. the trackpad.
As we all keep hearing, our kids are growing up in an age of unprecedented technology. While this could seem intimidating for them and for us parents, our kids are immersed already, and in many ways are more prepared to meet these new technologies head-on. Our students have a context for technology that we as adults might not have. For example, as parent volunteer Carol noted, many of the students come into the center already equipped with a concept of graphic 3 dimensional design thanks to their experience playing minecraft.
Some of the many imaginative items students have designed and printed include a castle, a planetarium, a treasure chest, a land speeder and much more.
