3D Printing - We've come a long way!!

I was honored to present last week at WEMTA about 3D printing in our schools.  I spoke about how we're changing our thinking about 3D printing from being a vehicle to create final products to being a vehicle to create learning tools to help all learners in our building.  I have a long way to go in this learning, and I would love to help the classroom teachers feel comfortable using the 3D printer as well, but we've come so far since we first bought our printer!

 I have had many 3rd and 4th graders using the printer this year to print components for projects they were presenting on - things that are too big, too small, too dangerous or too expensive to actually have in the classroom, but that can be replicated in a 3D printed model.  I'm looking forward to pushing that into even younger grades next year!  We've also been printing models of objects for teachers to use to supplement lessons.  This is very much still in its starting stage and will continue to be a work in progress for quite a while!

At WEMTA I learned about a few apps that can be used to photograph student drawings and convert them into 3D print (stl) files that we can send to the printer.  We've had fun with that this week!  First graders are experimenting with printing out their drawings of bugs, Next week the 3rd graders will be designing slogans to go along with social causes that they are studying and print them out as well.

It's fun to be learning these things right along with the kids!