Today in the iNEST maker club, students were engaged in a variety of fabrication projects from 3D printing to 3D pens to sewing to digital embroidery. Most students continued to work in TinkerCad to create 3D designs. Fifteen designs were placed in the new shared drive created for 3D models. Mentors will be working on printing those this week for distribution at next week's meeting. We had our first beta tester try out the new 3D pens today, with some success creating simple geometric shapes. Stephanie brought her sewing machine and worked with several girls on pillow designs, while Deborah got out the digital embroidery machine and worked with several girls to embroider their initials and graphic designs on scarves. Beyond these fabrication activities, club members were observed today working on several other projects including LittleBits and programming games in Scratch using the new Scratch coding cards. Club mentors will be meeting soon to plan our upcoming presentations about the club at the NC-TIES state technology conference in March. We had a student showcase presentation accepted and will taking five club members to the conference to show off their work with various circuits (copper foil, conductible ink, and conductible thread). We also had a regular presentation accepted where club mentors will discuss the first year of iNEST. We have come a long way since starting the club about one year ago with 43 different quests and 11 badges populated into our 3D GameLab learning environment for students to try out, and more quests planned this spring for programmed Sphero balls, Knex construction kits, and music activities with LittleBits.
Today in the iNEST Maker Club, members continued working with TinkerCad to design their own 3D models for printing on the club's new LulzBot 3D printers. A lot of different models were seen today, from jewelry to animals to personalized keychains and cell phone cases (see pics below). We've already enjoyed our first teachable moments, as students attempted to 3D-print flawed designs with curved bases. The 3D printer likes models with a flat base! We're still figuring out our policies for getting 3D .STL model files from students' laptops to the 3D printer-connected laptops, using either USB drives or emailing the files to one of the club mentors to load. We're also still figuring out our policies for cueing up the 3D prints, since each student model takes from 30-60 minutes to print, or longer. That means only two or three students can print per club meeting. However, Dr. Oliver and Mrs. Vick are going to run some 3D prints during the week, and return them to students the following club meeting.
At the beginning of today's meeting, Dr. Oliver introduced two new quests now available in the club's 3D GameLab learning environment, both related to Scratch coding cards. Students can now follow instructions on these cards to code ten different computer programs with the simple Scratch programming language, including four games (race, hide-and-seek, pong, and catch). The first students to try out the cards today indicated the instructions were easy to follow. Some club members have already been using the similar coding program Snap in their work with Hummingbird robotics. After the holiday break and a week off for the ice storm, the maker club started back up this past Tuesday, January 17th, 2017. Students found six new quests in the 3D GameLab learning environment tied to new technology the club acquired over the break--a set of four LIX 3D pens, and two LulzBot 3D printers. Dr. Oliver introduced students to TinkerCad for creating simple 3D designs, and students spent the day working through a set of TinkerCad tutorials. Four students got far enough along to create their own original designs in TinkerCad (i.e., personalized key chains, luggage tags), and our first student design was sent to the new LulzBot 3D printer through Cura software. While students were working on TinkerCad tutorials, Dr. Oliver 3D-printed a .STL model file of a dinosaur, so students could see how the printer worked.
In the background of this meeting, club mentors are working on selecting a set of active club members to represent the club at the upcoming NC-TIES conference in Raleigh. Supporting the club's leadership goals, a set of students will showcase their makerspace work at this state technology conference on Friday, March 3rd. Mentors have also started planning for the club's spring field trip to the Burlington mini-maker faire, to be held on Saturday, April 22nd. Also supporting leadership goals, Mariam is currently working on the club's third lunch table of the year to be held in February. Students will be sharing their knowledge of paper circuitry to build light-up cards with their peers in the school lunch room. |
Purpose:Dr. Oliver's weekly update of activities in the iNEST Maker Club. Archives
April 2019
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