Have a Makerbot in school story to share?

[bp-NCOSE]

Hello All -

In July, I am going to be giving a talk at OSCON in Portland titled
'Awakening The Maker Ethic in K-12 Students' (
http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/18776 ) and I
would like to include stories about Makerbots in K-12 schools. If you
have a story to share (good or bad) about using a Makerbot in a
school, ideally with a picture or two, I would greatly appreciate
hearing about it. You can reply here or off list : ' info (at)
ncose . org

To prime the pump, I can offer my one (not so good) datapoint: The
head of the local tech school bought a Cupcake Makerbot at my
recommendation. The Gaming and Animation class instructor had the
students assemble it over a couple of weeks, which they enjoyed, but
when it didn't work well immediately when they turned it on, they just
stopped and went on to other things. I was disappointed that they
missed the whole 'problem solving is a 21st century skill' angle and I
quickly determined that they hadn't even looked a most of the
documentation. I offered to come in an help them troubleshoot but
they had moved on.

So I am hoping for a couple of more positive stories I can share with
the Portland crowd.

Any of the people that received the teacher giveaway makerbots want
to share results with the group?

Thanks.

Bryant

*************

Bryant Patten
Executive Director
The National Center for Open Source and Education
www.ncose.org

[Doug Sheldon]

Hi Bryant,

I purchased a Makerbot for my 3-D design class (Autodesk Inventor) so that my students could see some of this emerging technology in action and realize their designs. I had many problem with the machine until purchasing a heated build platform and the latest plastruder. As I teach 8th graders many are just not experienced enough to take on the troubleshooting but all thoroughly enjoyed printing a design of their own making. I just received my new Thing-o-matic (result of more grant money) and I'm debating whether to build and troubleshoot over the summer or have my students take a try at the beginning of next school year. I'll probably build this summer just because of time constraints.
To me it's not surprising regarding your story about the students' lack of interest in troubleshooting. This is our new throw-away generation. I suspect it will take some real time and training for them to envision themselves as makers and problem-solvers. Many of my students did go back and modify their designs to ensure better prints when things didn't turn out well.

If it's any consolation, in my 7th and 8th grade robotics class I have many tenacious problem-solvers who stick with it until they get their designs working. This may be the real issue with the Makerbot story. The students didn't create the product so they didn't own the problems enough to solve them. Just a thought.

Doug Sheldon
Langston Middle School
Oberlin, OH

[Chris Connors]

Hi Bryant
I've got two Cupcake Makerbots in my high school classroom. One is
mine, one is the school's. This year I've started a new program in a
public high school: http://pemtech.pbworks.com/ 3D printing is one of
the ways that we are studying making. Students are also working with
the laser cutter, vinyl cutter and hand tools to make their own
original designs.

Photos of the projects students have done are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/connors934/tags/pemtech/ There is a set
with many of the photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/connors934/sets/72157625338318641/

In order for students to really access making, they shift to a
different style of learning than they experience in other parts of the
school: They try things, fix them and keep at it. I've distilled some
of the best qualities in this document on Innovative Learners:
http://pemtech.pbworks.com/InnovativeLearner

As far as the use of Makerbots in the classroom, there are a few
themes to what I've seen in the past two school years.

Time
Everything takes time. The Makerbot is a limited resource. Only one
print can be made at a time. Short prints tell you more about what is
right or wrong in your design than long prints. If you know what to do
as you set up the machine, you will work faster, and the next person
will be able to make their print. Longer prints are best done at the
end of class, during lunch or after school. If a student is uncertain
about the basic accuracy of a design, printing it for two hours isn't
going to be a good value of the machine time. This is especially true
if there are fifteen other students waiting for their turn.

Process
Earlier this year, I wrote up a few documents on how to design for and
print on the Makerbot:
http://pemtech.pbworks.com/SketchupToMakerbot
and
http://pemtech.pbworks.com/MakerbotPrint
As students have used the machine themselves, they have gotten better
at it, and are not following these guides strictly.
If students help each other, this can be useful in moving them along
quickly.

Persistence
Nothing ever works correctly the first time. You and your students
have to accept this and incorporate it into your schedule and approach
to problem solving.
Students are much more familiar with modern technology than we were as
youth. Their experience is much more based on very nice interfaces and
products that have been tested professionally and vetted before
production runs of millions. Their phones don't have the problem of
failing very often. This brings about something of a frustration with
less than perfection. It can also result in a 'prejudice of materials'
where they can discount a project because it isn't made of material
that is of a perceived quality. This goes to motivation. If students
can see the development of a project as a spiraling through the design
process, they have an easier time developing the persistence they will
need to craft a great project that represents their ideas. When they
begin the project, they often cannot see what it will look like at the
end. Being able to see a few steps ahead of where they are and know
that they can get it to work much better also helps them to maintain
their motivation.

I could go on....

Let me know what else you could use for your talk.
Chris Connors
connors934
http://chrisconnors.com/

[Jerry Isdale]

FYI: there was a discussion about hackerspaces & education at Maker Faire last month, which continued on several lists (discuss-hackerspaces, open manufacturing, ...) Everyone talked up how project based learning is great and how hackerspaces can provide a good alternative, but there has not been a lot of sharing of educational resources (presentations, lesson plans, etc).

So now we have an Educational Resources page on Hackerspaces.org wiki: http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Education

Please feel free to add links. signup is free.
I already added links to this group and Chris's PemTech.

Jerry Isdale
http://MauiMakers.com

[Evelyn Zayas]

We received our ThingOMatic about a month ago, after convincing our school
administration that for less than $1400, the students could see stuff that
they model in Autodesk Inventor. I let two 9th grade students, one
extremely bright and the other not so much, assemble it and it took them
about 16 hours. When it got to the last part, the electronics, and they were
about halfway through it, they both stepped away from it because they said
they didn't understand the instructions.

I have an electronics background so I stepped in, and took about 3 hours to
go back over the instructions to see if/where they missed a step, and then
to go through the "Your First Print" calibration and such. What I found was
that they missed a few instructions during the assembly phase because they
DIDN'T read the paragraphs in between the pictures. Therefore, if there was
no picture for the step, they overlooked it. Argggg.

But once I got it extruding, it's been working great ever since. In the last
few weeks, I have printed off many pieces that I saved out of Inventor in
STL format, and a few that I've downloaded from Thingiverse.com.

There have been 3 failures:

When printing a very thin and tall calibration piece - the raft doesn't stay
flat on the automated build platform, so it starts messing up after the
piece is about 10mm high. This problem is discussed in the forum: items with
small footprint on the ABP - put tape on the platform first.

The 2 other fails were because the filament got kinked like a garden hose
and jammed going into the extruder. Keeping the filament from becoming a
tangled mess has been a very big challenge! A filament spool holder and
guide - my goal for this week.

My next step is setting up the TOM so that we can print raftless. Wish me
luck :-)

Evelyn Zayas
Engineering & Technology
Kihei Charter High School
Maui, Hawaii

[john miller]

Hi,

I am a Director of IT for Litchfield Elementary School District in
AZ. We bought a Makerbot this year and will loan it out to some of
our schools in a pilot program to create innovation spaces in our
schools. So far, 4th grade classrooms have been very interested. We
decided to assemble the Makerbot (when I say we, I mean some of my
very enthusiastic staff). I figured there was not much fun in the
assembly for most students, but using it to make stuff will. After
all,
I want them to be engaged in the making process, not frustrated by
it. I was afraid the tedious assembly would just turn them off, and
they would not even want to use it. I will keep you posted as our
kids use it next year. For any "agile" people out there, I will also
be trying to teach our teachers and students Scrum, adapted to
education, so classrooms have a process to create innovative products
along with the tools.

Thanks,
John Miller

On Jun 2, 8:09 am, bp-NCOSE <whiteni...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello All -
>
>  In July, I am going to be giving a talk at OSCON in Portland titled

> 'Awakening The Maker Ethic in K-12 Students' (http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/18776) and I