Welcome to Week 11: 3D Printing. The primary goal of our OER is to introduce you to the topic of 3D printing and how it is has the potential to shape K-12 education. However, we also felt it pertinent to address the issues and challenges surrounding 3D printing in higher education, as well as how it is impacting industries, so this will be the secondary focus of our OER.
Through the course of this week we will be asking you to participate in 2 activities and one short survey. These activities are designed to have you interact with the creation of 3D objects and also to discuss the impacts of 3D printing as prompted by the case studies we will provide.
Please click here: http://etec522-3dprinting.weebly.com/to join us in our OER for this week!
We look forward to embarking on this week-long journey with you all!
The 3Ders,
Shane T., Kirsten N., Tiffany T., Danielle V. and Yik Wah P.
Hi Group 11,
Started on some of your activities already. Love the way you used Flickr to have us experiment with different 3D programs to create our own shapes. Is there one predominant program of the three that is used more often with high-school students? I noticed that one other shape seemed more user friendly within another program, as you can add colour but wondering about the benefits and cons of each program. Nice start to the week already! Thanks!
Cheers,
Leah
Hi Leah,
Glad you’re enjoying the activities. Our group wanted the week to be a fun learning experience for everyone (this being end-of-semester crunch time …), so we picked three tools that allow our classmates to design without CAD skill requirements. I can’t say for sure if one of the three is used more often in high school. Based on my own tinkering, I found Tinkercad to be the simplest – I’m sure younger children can master it. I tried customizing a bird using Thingiverse by Makerbot and got quite excited when I received an email from the Thingiverse team saying “Your Customized Thing is ready!” Turned out that I had not mastered the art of manipulating the XYZ coordinates of the 3D object. I will upload the poor bird on our Flickr site in a moment – it’s good to share a laugh!
Kirsten
Hi Week 11
Excellent presentation. I thought that the layout of your OER was visually attractive and interesting, and I have to say that I spent far longer using the Tinkercad program than I expected (I even went through the complete tutorial)! I thought that your overall flow of information was good – you explained what 3D printing is and clearly linked your presentation to its application in education.You had an excellent choice of programs for 3D printing design, and I actually feel a lot more comfortable with their use now. Your presentation also included a good mix of videos and articles that improved its relevance and authenticity. The only real negatives that I can point out are that I thought having to sign up for a Nabbie account was a bit off-putting (yet another in a long line of programs I have to enter my e-mail address into only to never use again) and that some of your questions were hard for me to relate to, since I teach classes that aren’t related to the physical sciences in adult education. Still, an excellent presentation!
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your kind comments. You were conscientious to work through an entire tutorial. I just jumped in and bumbled my way through Tinkercad. 🙂 I agree about the zillions of sign-ins. I’ve lost count of how many new accounts I have created since the start of this class. That was why our group created one Flickr account for everyone, something inspired by the Week 10 group.
We had wanted to do a broad sweep of the impact of 3D printing on industry, higher ed, and K-12 at first because we realized that this emerging market is massive! However, in adherence to the OER assignment guidelines, we had to (somewhat reluctantly) let go of industry and higher ed and focus on a narrower topic, K-12, as the majority (?) of our classmates are teachers of these grade levels. But as Yik Wah mentioned, we felt it pertinent to still include industry and higher ed as a secondary focus.
Kirsten
Week 11 Review:
I think you did a great job presenting an exciting topic. You were very thorough in describing the product, and showing how 3D printers can be used in education. You provided a clear picture of the market and introduced us to the major players. I enjoyed the first activity where you asked us to create a 3D design. I appreciate this, because I NEVER would have tried it before, given design is one thing I steer clear of. But, it wasn’t as scary as I thought, so thank you for dragging me out of my comfort zone. I really liked that you had us share our creations on Flickr, I hadn’t used it before. I had difficulty with the clarity of Activity 2. Because it was framed around the case studies, I crafted my response in regards to my reaction to my chosen case study (what I liked about it, disliked about it, how it could be improved etc). However, when I clicked on the discussion thread to paste my response, it then revealed a new question, unrelated to the case studies. I found this discouraging, as I had “wasted” 15 minutes writing about something that I wasn’t able to share, I was unmotivated to craft a new response. That aside, thank you for introducing me to 3D printers, and for the engaging week!
HI Katherine,
Thank you for your nice comments on our site content. We are glad that you were able to try something new this week and had intended to make this experience interesting and fun. We are glad that you were able to come out of your comfort zone in the use of flicker.
Our apologies for your confusions on the second activity. We were hoping that that having the questions at the bottom of the case study pages would be easy to find, but we will try to make them a bit easier to navigate for future users.
Thanks
Shane and the 3Der’s
Thanks for your OER. Everything flowed very well. I found Tinkercad easy to use, but also choose to look at Shapeshifter because I like Autodesk products. I would be comfortable using any of the products and probably will implement them in my curriculum this year: Tinkercad if I want students to create something from scratch, and Shapeshifter if I were to use in a class where I want to quickly introduce 3D printing as part of a unit. (I also use SketchUp but a little too complex for this OER).
I loved all the case studies as they gave me more ideas about the use and future of 3D printing. I can see it replacing some CNC manufacturing processes where one can save material and reduce weight as in the 3D bike frame, however it will not completely replace traditional CNC. I also thought it was creative to use “Thinglink” as a way to cite your references.
A minor suggestion: Under “Shaping the Future” would have liked to have drop-down menu for “Higher Education” and “Industry” because when I had to review them it would have been easier as a drop-down rather then scrolling down. And then for consistency I would also make drop-down menus for “Elementary/Middle” and “High School” (even though those are easy to get to).
I am more excited and feel more confident about introducing 3D printing at our school this year
Thanks Week 11 for the opportunity to update us on the latest in 3D printing niche. You provided decent overview of 3D printing and its practical usability in education and other different, I’d say “ultimately creative environments”. Looks to me that as whole society at this point we’re not fully aware of the many possibilities of 3D printing in future. Recently, using 3D printing technology hardworking experts started building big houses. When we synergize the AI, nanotechnology, robotics and 3D printing, the result is so positively disruptive, and at this point the effects are not easily imaginable, as well as the possible reach of these combined technologies, and its huge impact to the society, and the lives of all of us. I am looking forward to it!
Regards, Milorad.