This week I decided to dig into 3D printing. I used Tinkercad and created a sculpture. I was going for those boxes that will have a sphere inside of them. I did a few of the tutorials on the site. I found once I got further in the tutorials they were not very helpful and I wasn’t able to locate some of the items the tutorial asked you to find. The one about making a keychain I could not find the keychain base. Anyway, I thought the program was not as intuitive as many of the other tools we’ve used. That is probably because I have not spent much time with 3D modeling.
After reading the articles this week I keep going back to the idea that literacy is tied to creating on computers. I saw the cause and effect mentioned in the article from Libraries Ready to Code (2018) when I was creating my 3D object. Tinkercard has some free online lesson plans that are interesting to look at too. I browsed a few of those and noticed literacy throughout those lessons. I had not made the connection between things like 3D printing and literacy. I do see that connection now.
Sekinger’s (2019) article about 3D printing in the middle school library was inspiring. It sounds like that is a well funded and supported school library. I loved that they even sent the library assistant and librarian for training about 3D printing. Heck, I love that a middle school has a library assistant! The fact that the school library has a once a month session about the 3D library is a great idea. I think I will be taking that idea with me in my future career. 3D printer or not, getting kids into the library at lunch for information sessions sounds like an amazing opportunity for any school.
References
Libraries Ready to Code. (2018, November 26). How computational thinking fits within library services. ALA. https://www.ala.org/tools/readytocode/how-computational-thinking-fits-within-library-services
Sekinger, N. (2019, February 28). Making a place for “3d” in our school library. Imade 3D. https://www.imade3d.com/2019/02/making-a-place-for-3d-in-our-school-library/#respond
Wow! That is a very involved sculpture! I am very impressed with what you were able to create. Thank you for sharing!
I am quite impressed with your sculpture! I was not able to do anything close to that and did the Hour of Code instead. I agree that it wasn’t very intuitive! I also agree that the middle school sounds pretty impressive; the support their staff and give them what they need to succeed. These classes are (further) opening my eyes to the differences from one school to another. I think that the once a month lunch will serve your school well!
Wow! Great work on your sculptures! I found the same thing. The beginning of the tutorials were quite helpful. The further in I got, they were much more difficult.
Your sculpture is amazing! I had some struggles using Tinkercad. Even after going through some of the tutorials, I couldn’t get it to do what I wanted. Great job!
Wow, Theresa I am quite impressed with your creation! That is why more advanced than my feeble attempts. Nice work with this! I too enjoyed the article on the librarian in the middle school library. He had a lot of great ideas. I saved that article too for my file for future ideas. 🙂