3-D printing!

Today I finally got to 3-D printing. I have been working with the programs before class for a couple of weeks. The main one I have used is Tinkercad. I asked my group if we could work with 3-D printing and they said yes! I made it all the way through the tutorial so I was feeling pretty confident. Everybody brainstormed with play-doh. We ended up with lots of things including an octopus made by the lovely Summer. I love the idea of letting students brainstorm this way to figure out all the shapes they will need. We ended up making a key chain for Becca. This whole project could be used to teach so many lessons. The most obvious one would probably be teaching shapes, volume, and surface area. When you are working with 3-D shapes these lessons go hand-in-hand. Another lesson could be using the metric system. The program we used uses the metric system and I had to think about how a millimeter is compared to an inch for a little bit. The program also runs on planes, so for a middle school classroom you could teach them about the different planes. Once we got the key chain made, we plugged my computer in and printed it. It took a while to download the program to my computer. It was so exciting once it started working though. 3-D printing can be used in just about every classroom young and old.