I've been hearing more about more about schools purchasing 3D printers, but teachers being unsure about how to actually implement the technology in their classrooms. Last year I built out a makerspace at my former school complete with three 3D printers. I introduced a series of design thinking challenges that asked students to 3D print artifacts for an actual user. One such project asked students to create and print a necklace pendant for a friend.
Last month, I was honored to present my jewelry design thinking project to my colleagues at our district's annual tech conference, Tech Talk & Googlepalooza. You can view my deck from the session here.
Last month, I was honored to present my jewelry design thinking project to my colleagues at our district's annual tech conference, Tech Talk & Googlepalooza. You can view my deck from the session here.
| We used a few different CAD programs in my class, but I love Tinkercad because it incredibly easy to use and, more importantly, it's free! It is also web-based which allows students to work on their designs anywhere without having to worry about saving their files to a jump drive or emailing them to themselves. To start the session, I quickly described the design thinking process while handing out planning sheets (see below). For one minute, teachers were asked to reflect on their perfect necklace design and write down their notes in Box A. Next, participants partnered up and had two minutes to interview one another while writing notes and sketching in Box B. Last, teachers had one minute to summarize their notes in a single sentence in Box C. After the brainstorming it was time to get to work. I gave the teachers a brief overview of how to use Tinkercad to create a necklace pendant. My two pieces of advice were to:
Teachers then had 15 minutes to use their notes to design a pendant for their partner. Afterwards, they had two minutes each to share their designs and used the feedback they received to make revisions for the remainder of the session. The hour ended with everyone downloading their designs as an .stl file and emailing it to their partners to print once they got back to their own classrooms. I'll be sharing other design project in future posts. Special thanks to my colleague, Mrs. Kasia Derza (@MrsDerza), for allowing me to showcase her design here. |  Simple design with a star with a torus  Mrs. Derza's necklace design |