Can Students Who are Y3/Y4 Create Using 3D Printers

This post is intended as a summary of some of the creations that have been made from within my classroom this year.  As I have noted on the blog the core classroom of students this year is Year 3 and Year 4 in New Zealand, that puts the age of students at seven and eight.   Having not had experience seeing students of this level work with a 3D Printer/Tinkercad on a regular basis (instead of special projects that were a one off or a class of older students 

To say that the creativity, designs are ideas have been amazing is something of an understatement.  We have currently three Snapmakers running at our rural School in South Taranaki.   Our students are designing their creations under the Tinkercad system and classroom program, when the designs are then being checked for viability and then printed for the students to experiment with.   Some of the students had experience when they were tutored by older students last year, while others are designing and creating for the first time.

The first day of design saw a student who is Y4 create this for a specific purpose - he literally wanted a 'Do Not Disturb' sign for his room and his door handle and wanted to be able to personalise it with his name.

He created it based upon dimensions from his memory, as he hadn't considered making a 3D print to solve this problem, and had to estimate the size of the door handle to which he wanted to attach this.

The print took under two hours, came in at 150mm long and 90mm wide.   When reviewing the piece the student considered the option of changing the font and the lettering (just for his personal taste) and looking at ways to decorate this (which was going to be spray painting when supervised in an area of our school with a senior student). 

The positive thing about this was the design was nearly instantly completed other than a quick tutorial about the concept of 'grouping' which was explained in this video which had been previously completed by students at our school and explained the 3D Printing process and creation.   

Following this a second student indicated that her sister whose name is not particularly common had a birthday coming up but wanted to have something with her name on it.   This lead to the creation of one of the tasks that I've tried successfully with the older students where a badge/name plate for bags etc is created.   This again used a video tutorial created by previous students and the Y4 student was able to produce a range of hearts (shown left) for the sister.  The student also wanted to decorate them in a unique why and so another student was responsible for the spraying she had input into the colour scheme and the design - another activity where the Y4 student was able to understand and create without the need to have interaction with the teacher and was able to deliver a finished product that just required printing.  

It is not only the 'older' students who have had some limited design experience two of the students who are showing some of the most pleasing originality have already created a range of design that we are struggling to keep up with (significantly which some are being made and refined in their own time).   These have ranged in size and print time from two or so hours such as one of the designs that featured left and include the 'scribble' design from the Tinkercad main interface that was turned into a working desk organiser.

In this situation we are going out of way to encourage this creativity because its clear this is the first step to developing the students ideas and making 'stuff'.   There have been some projects that have been printed that require adjustments but it is being stressed to the students that projects that don't work can be just as valuable as ones that are successful the first time.

This stationary holder, shown left was a four hour print that was intended to house the students items that they used for work in the classroom.  When the student designed it however the central part of the container, which was to house pencils and other material, was too short being only 50mm high.   The student has then looked at the creation and converted its intended use to jewellery container.  This has had a flow on affect because she has taken the responsibility to investigate and look at further projects and start checking their height using her design as the key.  As a direct consequence of this further prints such as the one show below are able to be more suited for the purpose.

This stationary container was conceived, created and printed and decorate in class in the last week by a student who had some experience but was keen to develop her skills further.  Despite being a 'Junior School Student' who is a Y4 student (eight years old turning nine) I would rank this design from start to finish up amongst some of the best ideas that could be compared to the older students who have experience when they are making and creating using 3D Printers.