Junior Classroom Challenge: Student Cubes

 

Challenge: Students were given a class wide challenge to take a 3D Object, which was a dice shape and then create six different shapes to this shape.  Students were instructed that the design aspects of the shape needed to be sunk into the design, not to have the details facing outwards.   This was a continuation of some of earlier classroom term design projects pencil sharpener holder, ear rings designs and a boat.

Background: This was a classroom challenge for the entire classroom.   The task was pushed out to the students for them to complete their design.    It was a short time frame for this design, but the emphasis was for students to design into the base of the shape - as typically the students add external details which can be effective, but by inverting the process it develops the students design abilities in this area.

We allowed the students the ability to create an individual project with a different size depending on what the students wanted to work with.    A range of the designs and shapes can be shown on the left.  In the series of prints students typically used the various shapes that were available and easily inserted from the main Tinkercad interface.  

Level of Difficulty: Easy for the students who have used Tinkercad for nearly a calendar year

Size: The smallest of the three shapes shown left is 20mm by 20mm.   The larger red shape was 35mm by 35mm.   The largest gold shape was 50mm wide and was 60mm long, it was 50mm high.   These designs were all 

Timeframe: The smallest of the shapes took under twenty minutes, the middle shape took ninety minutes and the largest of the shapes took four hours.   In retrospect for this design the smallest shape would have worked perfectly for this project and given that the intention is to transfer the skill of the designing into the base of the shape.

What we would do differently next steps for the students: We would like to see the students transferring this ability to other designs such as the badge or name plate.   This has proven to be a simple design task that was easily printed in a time frame that would mean it potentially could be a successful classroom project.