My first question this week was whether my current high school library has a 3D printer.  The answer is NO, we do not have a 3D printer.  Our Tech ED department has one but it is limited to those classes.  This is another idea I would like to keep in my mind for when I actually put on my big girl pants and become a librarian 🙂  The one quote from Sekinger that stood out to me this week and made me want to explore was “In truth, students and adults still come into the library and get excited over whatever is printing. It is a magical feeling to see a 3D printer at work“ (2019).  I would love to have this type of library!

This quote from Libraries ready to code sparked my interest and had me brainstorm “Designing and building a block tower that is the tallest and can withstand a simulated “earthquake” provides a creative play opportunity in which they model solutions to a real-life problem.”  This lead me to a PBL project that I have my geometry class do.  There is a bridge in our area that floods constantly.  I took pictures of the bridge before, after, and during flooding.  The project I gave students in groups was to design a bridge with popsicle sticks and hot glue.  They were limited to the number of popsicle sticks and hot glue.  We then tested each groups bridge to see how much weight it would uphold by using a device with weights from our ag/tech department.  This project was a huge success!  It was assigned after our triangles unit and they learned that the more triangles they had in their design the stronger the structure.

So after all that rambling, I thought about possibly designing this with Tinkercad as a PBL.  I found a video on Youtube designed by Nikolaus Thomas that helped show me the steps on how to make a bridge on Tinkercad.  Where I used to set limits for popsicle sticks I could set the limits to size in inches on Tinkercad.  This is a very rough start on designing a bridge.   I would not use this in a competition or presentation by any means, it is just an example. This is just me working for an hour trying to figure it all out.  

I learned how extremely hard this program is if you are not experienced.  You have to make sure that everything matches up and touches exactly within each workplane.  I had to learn especially the view rotation piece to make sure from each angle all pieces touch.  I learned how to make different workplanes for each different side of the bridge.  I would need to play with Tinkercad for a really long time before feeling comfortable presenting this to a class.   

I would love to try to write a grant for a 3D printer once I have a library.  I think this would draw students and faculty into a school library.  I would also love to see what all the students could design to produce critical thinking.  

References:

Libraries ready to code.  (2018, November 26).  How computational thinking fits within library services.  http://www.ala.org/tools/readytocode/how-computational-thinking-fits-within-library-services.  DOI:  03dad41c-b8f0-408f-9e81-260b6b61455a.

Sekinger, N.  (2019, February 28).  Making a place for “3D” in our school library.  IMADE3D.  https://www.imade3d.com/2019/02/making-a-place-for-3d-in-our-school-library/.
Thomas, N.  (2018, October 12).  Creating a Bridge Model in TinkerCAD.  [Video].  Youtube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W-XubQKWK8&t=623s.