Its beginning to feel a lot like Christmas 2026

 

Its not too far away, we have eight weeks of school remaining and as such we are starting to plan our activities as we look forward to the end of the year.

Each year we complete a range of activities and in this case we are looking at reworking our Christmas themed 3D Prints for this year.

If you use the search bar on the right hand side and use the 'Christmas' tag you can see projects with this theme dating back to 2018.

We've posted about this on a semi-regular basis.   This year we've started the process in a similar way to last year - we've spent a short amount of time looking at basic decorations.  The first task for the students is to create a festive tree.  This is being completed by the entire class and some students ideas, concepts and creations will make the process from virtual design to an AR/VR design into a physical print.

The designs started with an ideas session with students with the criteria being 'festive tree'.    The students were given a twenty minute timeframe to complete this task which included the design, creation and basic AR/VR projection.   The only resources required by the students was the TInkercad App for the design and an iPad for the projection.

Once this had been completed the students took their technology outside and completed some basic projection.   The locations was at the students discretion around the school - we wanted the students to be able to rotate their creations so we could see them from different sides, experiment with the dimensions and the size.

As we have mentioned when we produced this type of activity before it allows an entire class of students (twenty five students) to engage in 3D Design and creation (this can be related directly to the digital technology objects for the New Zealand School Curriculum).    The students all have an output from this activity which can be assessed and judged.

We are then going to allow the students to share their creations and designs and refine their ideas.   This will allow students to add more details and features.   One of the considerations needs to be potential for the prints to be 3D Printed.  Some of the creations particularly with the decorations need to be considered for printing - at times even a machine like the H2D can find some issues with the decorations on sloped levels and the printing of some of the fine details,   The best way to complete this is to take some selected trees and print the designs show students can see the physical version of their designs.