Encouraging the use of 3D Printers and other technology in the Classroom by sharing examples and good practise - from a classroom of wonderful junior school students in New Zealand.
For the start of the school year we are aiming as quickly as possible to use our block of afternoon to introduce students to Tinkercad and begin the process of having the students develop their skills.
For the first challenges we have two distinct groups of students. The first are the students who spent last year in the classroom and have worked with Tinkercad for a school year.
The other group of students are novices who have not used Tinkercad previously. We are a 1:1 iPad ADS School - we are very fortunate that every student has an iPad. The students have a class Tinkercad account and use it to design. The first task should be very familiar to regular visitors of this blog - we typically call it 'badge' and you can of course use the search bar top right to locate many previous examples.
The core learning was done via the students utilising the 'experts' in the classroom and also the flipped video that we mentioned yesterday. This tutorial video is the number visited page on this site -
The intention is to up skill the students. Once the task was completed we checked the criteria with the students prints. We looked at the composition, the balance and the criteria. Students needed to have their name on the design, a shape and a hole to create the purpose for the print.
We allocated thirty minutes for this time to include the design, and then reviewing the design in Tinkercad. We did not use the AR/VR function of the design at this point but were able to rotate the students designs and creations.
The class currently consists of twenty students. There are fifteen students in the cohort who are starting to design. Each of the prints have a different completion time as the sizes vary but in the example shown left the print measures 90mm by 90mm and is 8mm wide.
In this version shown left the student opted to have their name sunk down into the design, instead of sticking out, this again is something of a design 'trick' of 3D Printing designs while the obvious design would be to pull the letters above the base line in this example as a design feature. Once this was completed the second part of the challenge was to complete the process again for another person (so it could be assessed differently from the first) and include two additional features. This had the students starting to understand the concept of using the shapes and design contained within Tinkercad.
We've been looking at some basic facts about 3D Printing that might be discussion or talking points for individuals (teachers) or adults or groups who might dip their toes into 3D Printing from a practical stand point and considering some of the obstacles. Every school has a different situation a different set of circumstances that dictate how projects might work which could be simple as resources or ongoing funding for something as basic as PLA. We have a focus on creation and innovation at our school and are incredibly lucky that we can use the technology in a way that we do.
Each of these four points has a small post about examples of how you might approach the concept or the challenge that it could face. The fifth 'lore' concept for 2026 is 'The teacher is aware'.
The skill set that a teacher needs to create or encourage 3D Printing needs to be an awareness but not a mastery or experience to any particular level. While teaching and encouraging creativity are incredibly important in teaching any part of the curriculum the practical terms is that the teacher in this case is not particularly skilled in designing or creation. Over time an awareness of what might work or what might not work has become a bit more obvious (although as the technology improves drastically as the machines improve as shown from what the students were doing in 2014 compared to what students have been completing in 2025
One main reasons for this site is to encourage the use of technology within classroom and school environments and locations. Hence examples like this slideshow below - it is intended to allow a teacher with minimum experience to complete the process of creating ear rings with a class of students, in this example the class who worked on this project was seven and eight year olds however it is quite possible that this could work on a variety of levels. It was intended as a basic 101 project for someone who might be working on 3D printing with students for the first time:
Note from the author of the blog:
This site was always intended as a way to share the use of technology - it was originally just a 3D Printing site but as the technology has evolved over time (yes we really did start posting in 2014) other options have become available to the point now even the name of the site is in question. Originally it was only ever going to be a 'blog' as this teacher had previously worked on successful class blogs in the past (this archive clsas blog for example has now had 1.3 million page views and is more popular now when active) however recent events have meant that we are preparing to launch on several other formats in the near future, although the intention is for this site to remain more or less the same, at least at the time of writing this (January 2026).
Challenge: To use Tinkercad and scribble to create a unique decoration/cookie cutter.
Background: During Christmas 2025 we had a range of projects that we were working on as the year came to an end. We also wanted to look at projects that students could complete independently and also potentially festive, and this design was made as part of the cookie cutter challenge for our students.
While some students had worked on complex designs including versions that included handles, such as the examples that were shown in these posts. This student is a skilled designer and was able to consistently able to produce creations and prints of the highest quality. This design was deliberately kept as simple as possible by the student - balancing the shape and the viability of the design. This was created in under ten minutes by a seven year old student.
This would be an ideal introductory task for a student starting to work on a 3D Printing challenge. It was completed with an iPad and followed a similar process to some of our earlier design. The student wanted to consider using this design as also a bunting - hence the reason that it was printed using super glow in the dark PLA.
Level of Difficulty: Low. This would be a basic introductory task for someone with students starting 3D Printing if you are a teacher looking for a first step with 3D Printing this would be a great place to start.
Size: This print was 60mm high, 50mm wide and 10mm thick. This was quite a small design however it could easily be up-scaled to something similar. Resizing would have taken the student just a few seconds to drag and drop the design.
Cost: We made a conscious decision to use the Bambu H2D printer to complete this task as potentially we would be producing a number of prints (if this would be used as bunting or a decoration). By using the Bambu inbuilt software we can determine that this print used 6.5g of filament and this was determined to cost $0.16 per produce per unit. It would have been slightly higher had non glow-in-the-dark PLA used.
Timeframe: Twenty minutes using the Bambu H2D. Had we used one of the schools Snapmaker the print would have been successful but would have taken twice the time.
What we would do differently/next steps for the students: This was a straight-forward task with a basic simple outcome that was easily completed, although potentially the student could have placed more emphasis on the details involved in the silhouette however this wouldn't necessarily have translated to a better final product.
This slideshow is intended to be a series of suggestions and ideas for a teacher who might run a 3D Printing project in their classroom. The teacher who created it has Y3/4 student although it would be a suitable introductory task for someone wanting to explore starting. This was previously published and has now had additional material put onto it and also I have included an explanation video at its conclusion which is a project overview.
The purpose of this site when it was initially set up was to share ideas and projects for potential 3D Printing the classroom, and the first few years were exclusively about this. Overtime as we expanded our technology at our school to include resources such as the laser cutter and sticker machine we have added material around the use of these machines.
It was never a site to have the .stl files for projects (although we have supplied them via email at time) and while it has always been teacher and student focussed we are aware of general interest in some of the projects. As always I would like to point out that the material that is published here is very much the collective efforts of a number of staff and of course the students from our school and I would like to make sure that they get the proper credit when it is due.
