Starting 2025 With a New Classroom

 

The school year in New Zealand has started for 2025 (for the benefit of those of you who are visiting this page from overseas we run from February to December each year).

We have a classroom of Y3/4 students the Y4 students had the experience of using Tinkercad and the 3D Printers last year, the younger students who are seven years old are typically designing for the first time.

As it has been the last few years we are using Tinkercad to design and maintain our students creativity.   This blog has been running for over ten years of 3D Printing for classroom designs - we cannot say enough of the practicality of using Tinkercad for our students CAD designs.   Apart from the face its a free program, it is a web based design site continues to evolve and develop.   The classroom management is exceptional,  and the students are able to design easily - this years new students have been mentored by the older students who have quickly picked up how to design and create.

We are a 1:1 iPad School - we have pushed the Tinkercad app out to all our school iPads as the app allows for the students to VR/AR their designs anywhere.

Each year we start with basic designs such as those shown left.  We will not be repeating all of our designs again this year as posts - you can look at the 'search' bar on the right hand side and look at 'badges' which we have created for the past ten years or click at some of our exemplars such as the one located here.

Our students are independently creating these designs which we will be printing a range of, typically we would expect them to come in at under two hours on our Snapmaker Printers.   Although for the first time in several years we are going to experiment by purchasing additional printers.

The new tool from the main Tinkercad interface has already proven to be very popular with the students, allowing precision cutting to take place from larger objects and also to add additional shapes to a creation.   We have also started exploring the changes to the main picture interface.

This site is being maintained by an active classroom teacher - that is someone who regularly teachers students and encourages creativity.  If you want to get in the contact with the teacher you can email me at:

myles.webb@gmail.com

I also am on several of the social media sites and platforms chiefly as @NZWaikato.   I am more than happy to explain the process or creation of particular projects further including some of the other projects that I have been involved in.

We also have a major school event this year - we are again holding a School Market Day when the local community comes into the school to looks at the products that the students create.   We have a specific tab from the main menu from last years event including detailed videos of the event.  You can click on that here.