Teaching real-life 3D printing lessons

In recent years, 3D printing becomes available in manufacturing and today it offers awesome results and possibilities to create almost everything, from small objects to houses and medical implants. 3D printing enables many opportunities for everyone to be a maker. As Laura Fleming said: “Makers movement is about moving from consumption to creation and turning knowledge into action”.
That is why 3D printing finds its place in education. Making 3D solids objects from a digital file is an exciting learning experience.
To transfer their ideas to the realistic useful objects, students need to model, use different techniques, and prepare files for 3D printing. Besides mathematics and technology, students develop creativity and critical thinking.
In many schools, students guided by their teachers had an opportunity to explore the world of 3D printing.
As the schooling process was stopped by a global pandemic, classrooms become empty and moved to the virtual world, but 3D printers did not stop to print. Teachers across Europe turned their 3D printers on and joined local movements of 3D makers in the action to print face shields for medical workers. Among many other great stories that showed up during these hard times, I would like to share ours.
The teachers Pekka Ouli (Finland), Marcin Jabłoński (Poland), Ewout Warringa (Netherland), and I Natalija Budinski (Serbia) changed our models of teaching by showing our examples of how knowledge can be applied in real-life situations. But also, we experienced and shared great patience, motivation, and persistence.

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If you would like to know more about how Marcin Jabłoński’s connected 3D printing and school lessons can be found on this link. Where he writes about the Implementation of ‘3D Printing-Modern Available Technology of The Future’. In addition, bellow you can also check out photos and insights from the Ewout’s 3D printing lab:

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Together with the local 3D printing makers, we printed as many face-shields as we could to protect those who needed it the most. See doctors from the Emergency Unit from Kula, Serbia are in the Picture bellow

Students learn in the classroom, but also out of the classroom, and usually, the most important lessons are provided by life itself. Teachers are here to explain, demonstrate, but most of all to inspire. The global pandemic was a great lesson to all of us, hope we learn, as students and as teachers.
Author: Natalija Budinski, Scientix Ambassador from Serbia
Featured photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash – See Licence
Tags: 3D printing, collaborative working, protection masks, Scientix ambasadors