Have you seen the Instagram filter where you have to "guess the gibberish"? It's fun to play, and when I saw @elementarymountainmovers post them on her IG feed, I thought it would be fun to play with students during a virtual class meeting!
So, on Friday, I played with a class of 4th graders, and it was a blast! Some are easier than others, but all around a great brain break! I plan on playing this week with 3rd graders as well.
About 5 years ago, my school got our first 3D Printer. It was a MakerBot Replicator Mini, and the first thing I ever printed on it was a robot that I found online. Flash forward 5 years, and we now have two 3D Printers - the original MakerBot Mini, and another MakerBot Replicator. I've probably printed about 500+ student projects over the last few years, and I am definitely self-taught! It's taken a lot of patience, perseverance, and growth mindset to get to the comfort level I'm at today... and I am still always learning! So, here's my attempt at sharing my knowledge and hopefully helping anyone who wants to try 3D printing with your students!
I should also mention the fact that it has taken me awhile to feel comfortable printing an entire grade levels' projects...! The first few years, I printed just a few "winners" from each class. Now, I have the confidence to print 100+ student projects! So, I am excited to share the Bubble Wand project I did with 3rd graders because it was so simple and easy to print! (Also, it's not my original idea... I don't know where I first saw it, but I'm not the first person to 3D print bubble wands :-)
Day 1 - 1 hour
- Login to Tinkercad (we used our GAFE accounts and then the students put in a code to join my Tinkercad teacher account... this is how I was able to see and download all of the students' projects)
- Viewed examples of different bubble wands that I found on Google Images/Pinterest and discussed as a class what they thought made a good bubble wand
- Sketched ideas with paper/pencil
- Setup the "stick" part of the wand. Students had to make it 5x5x100mm long. I modeled how to do this in Tinkercad first and then sent them to their laptops to do.
- After everyone had their base to the wand, I showed them some different examples of how they could decorate it. I allowed them to use the shapes or the scribble tool, but it had to be 5mm tall to match the height of the stick. The only exception to the 5mm height was if they wanted text to stand out on top of the wand.
This is a video I made for students to watch as well, that shows me modeling the different steps:
Day 2 - 30 minutes
- Class discussion of what a quality design is: Creative, Connected (no gaps/grouped), and Flat (on the workplane).
- Finish wand design in Tinkercad and make sure it has the correct file name (Name - Wand).
After Day 2, I started printing them all out! Since I was doing all of the printing, I inspected each design before printing it. I made sure that everything was flat on the workplane and connected/grouped.. if it wasn't, I'll be honest, I did fix it. Sometimes the fix was so minimal (moving something a millimeter!), and since it was their first Tinkercad experience, the students gained the knowledge in Tinkercad that I wanted them to have. As we progress into 4th grade next year designing a 3D Printed City, I will talk more about quality designs, troubleshooting and making sure their design works for the 3D printer.
Day 3 (After all the wands were printed)
Test the bubble wands outside! Discuss what worked well and what could be designed better next time.
Q&A
These are some of the questions I got on Instagram.. of course let me know if you have more!
Q - What 3D Printer do you use?
We have two Makerbots... a Mini and a Replicator. I am comfortable with them and like them! I love that I could print 5-6 wands at a time on the larger printer.. it made it go by quicker!
Q - How long did it take for you to print all the wands? How did you manage it?
It took a few weeks.. about 2-3 days per class (we have 5 sections of 3rd grade). If I printed one wand at a time, it took anywhere from 45 minutes - 2 hours, depending on the size and complexity of the design. In terms of managing it... since I made classes in Tinkercad, I used a class list and went class by class. I downloaded all the students' files for one class, and then just set them up in a queue on the desktop to print. I was kind of strategic about which designs I printed when... I always printed more complicated ones or designs I thought might have an issue during the school day, and simpler designs I knew would work over night. After they printed, I put a little bit of blue tape with their name on it.
Q - How do you teach students the basics of Tinkercad?
The video shows exactly what I showed students to get them started with this project. That's my only goal for 3rd grade; to get them familiar with the tools, workplane, and manipulating shapes. In 4th grade, I have students go through the Tinkercad tutorials and we talk about moving the workplane and truly working in the 3D environment as we construct a 3D Printed City!
Let me know if you have any other questions! Can't wait to see what your students create!
Happy Friday! Does anyone else feel like they blinked and it's suddenly mid-April? What happened to the last few weeks?!
Anyways, if you follow me on Instagram, you might have caught my stories when we did a school-wide STEAM Day with a retro video game twist! We do STEAM days twice per year, just before our breaks as a fun way for the school to come together and get their STEAM on! Teachers love it, kids love, and I love, love, love it!
I had quite a few requests for the resources, so here you go!
Tetris Puzzles & Pixel Art
Pac Man with Dash
Duck Hunt Pom Pom Launchers
Mario Kart Mazes
Sonic the Hedgehog Spheros
If you host your own STEAM Day, let me know with a tag or a comment! Can't wait to see!
This year for the Hour of Code I have different coding activities planned for the whole month of December, but to kick it off this week, each grade level that I work with 1st-4th is getting a choice of some of the different activities available through HourOfCode.com
On my website that I use with students, I created a page for each grade level so students can easily navigate to the different challenges. Click the images below to go to the direct page!
Also, to introduce Hour of Code to each grade level, I used some of the Code.org videos.
NPR had an article recently of how Class Dojo can tie in with Growth Mindset - they've created a series of videos to help kids understand the topic. A little cheesy, but cute!
As we use Google Apps for Education more and more in our day, there is always something new to learn! (growth mindset ;-) These tutorial videos range from 1-5 minutes on a variety of topics, from searching in Google, to YouTube and Google Drive.
PBS LearningMedia is your destination for direct access to thousands of classroom-ready, curriculum-targeted digital resources. PBS LearningMedia builds on the strength of public media and is designed to improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement. Resources are aligned to Common Core and national standards and include videos and interactives, as well as audio, documents, and in-depth lesson plans. You can browse by standards, grade level, subject area, and special collections. You can also favorite and share resources with your class and colleagues. Best of all, PBS LearningMedia’s basic service is free for PreK-12 educators.
The Work Collector is a Google Script that allows students to scan a QR code and then upload files directly into YOUR Google Drive account! If you are not using Google Classroom, but want students to submit work to you that you can share on your website, etc, this would be an easy way to collect their projects from computers or iPads. Thanks to The Techie Teacher for sharing this great resource!
Also... Don't forget that the Hour of Code is this week! If you want to try it with your students, feel free to join in during tech class, or visit https://hourofcode.com/us and check it out! The kids are loving that the new tutorials this year include Minecraft and Star Wars :-)
