More Thoughts About 3D Printing

This week I am showing my Polar 3D printer to the kindergarten students at my school. I will state out front, I am NOT a kindergarten teacher. After so many years teaching high school and not having raised children of my own, I find it a challenge to teach the younger kids. I always feel like I am talking WAAAAY over their heads. Turns out, kindergarteners know more than I thought. Of course, it helps that our kindergarten team of teachers is so talented and is preparing them well.

I mirrored an iPad serving as a camera to a TV in my room so the kids could better see the printer in action. They have been talking about snowflakes so I printed a snowflake for them as I talked about 3D printing and some ways it can be used. Of course, the favorite type of 3D printer for most kids (ok, adults too) is the one that prints in chocolate. I wish I had one of THOSE to show!

Here is a video on 3X speed of the first layer of the snowflake I printed for them. I even prepared for their visit by making each of them (all 160+ kindergarteners in our school) their very own 3D printed snowflake. One sweet girl said she was going to make her snowflake into a necklace.

I am looking forward to continuing to explore 3D printing, not only for myself but for how I can help students use it to express their inner genius. With use of applications like Tinkercad and our ever-growing Chromebook inventory, I hope to have some students designing and printing their own creations soon. It is an exciting time!

Want to learn more about 3D printing? Check out my December, 2015 Tech Newsletter!