I spent my hour exploring Tinkercad and I’m glad that I did! I have used Hour of Code for several years and that is always a popular activity with my students. I have many librarian friends with 3D printers, but I have always been a bit nervous to try them. I think this school year will be the year that I get one for special projects. I think they are really awesome to use to wrap up a project and the students have to take their time building their 3D print on Tinkercad. I enjoyed making some Minecraft Party Glasses. Minecraft has been popular in my house this summer and one of the only things that my children (7 & 10) can do together without fighting. I won’t pretend that I made the building process look easy, even after doing all of the practice lessons. I never figured out how to group objects together, but got pretty good at resizing and changing the colors. I think my party glasses would successfully print. My next question is where would I wear them?
I really liked the article about the Virginia Beach teen that was helping medical staff in the throws of Corona, where getting your hands on protective gear was hard. Jake Long used his school’s 3D printer to produce face shields for medical workers. “When he noticed no one was rallying the 3D printing community to make supplies, he decided he would step up to the plate” (Gaskins, 2020). I love that a high school student rose to the occasion and was able to help so many medical workers, including his own parents.
The book Beauty and the Beak by Deborah Lee was popular at my Scholastic Book Fair a few years ago. It is about an eagle that had a new beak made for him with a 3D printer after being shot by a poacher. The article about the turtle named Akut-3 reminded me very much of that book. Starr (2015) reports that this turtle was injured by a boat propeller and it lost 60% of the upper and lower jaw on it’s right side (para. 2). 3D printing successfully helped Akut-3 recover and it was released back into the wild. I think both of the stories will help our students to be more excited about 3D printing and to see real life applications. They will hopefully see even more real life applications of 3D printing in their lifetimes.
Gaskins, K. (2020, April 15). Virginia beach teen is using 3D printer to make face shields. Wavy. https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/virginia-beach/virginia-beach-teen-is-using-3d-printers-to-make-face-shields/
Starr, S. (2015, May 19). Robo-turtle gets a new 3d printed face. Cnet. https://www.cnet.com/news/robo-turtle-gets-a-new-3d-printed-face/
Were you able to create your glasses in an hour? They look great and you even included nose pieces. I hope you get an opportunity to print them out. I don’t know anyone with a 3D printer, but if I did, I would have tried tinkercad too.
Yes, I made them in an hour! There was a template, so they told me exactly where to put things! I know my public library has a 3D printer, but I have never tried it. Tinkercad was fun!
Our public library has a 3D printer that patrons can use for the cost of materials. It would be awesome if you could find a way to print them!
That’s really cool! I know our public library has one too. Now I will need to ask about printing. It would be fun to have my first creation.
Great glasses! Tinkercad looks like a lot of fun to play around with. Beauty and the Beak sounds like an interesting book; I’m going to add it to my ever-increasing list of books to check out. Thanks!
If you are like me, you just keep putting more books on hold. The public library will miss me when I’m back to school and don’t get to visit so much. Between my kids and I we pick up holds at least twice per week. Tinkercad is pretty awesome. I liked that it made creations easy. I had no idea what I was doing at first!
I’m really impressed with your glasses! We have a 3-D printer at our school, but I have never seen anyone use it. I do know that a student used one at her middle school at the beginning of quarantine to make mask extenders for first responders. I’m thinking that this year I want to try out our Makerspace at school!