Update on our grade school 3D Printer Club

[Alex Franke]

I haven't posted an update in a while, but I'm hopeful that we'll still be able to drum up some conversation and ideas. 

As many of you know, we started a project-based "3D printer club" at our kids' elementary school, and we've been working hard on it. Currently we meet once every two weeks about about 1.5 hours, but we're considering adding the off-week for what I'd call "break out" work (a little more time for each team to work together on their own parts of the project) or for things like demos or guest speakers. 

Our club is broken up into six teams: Accounting, Materials (BOM), Build (project planning), Blogging, Membership, and Makers. The kids are age 7-10 (grades 2-5), and our goal is to have them do the work with the guidance of adult advisers on each team. We're giving them the opportunity to make mistakes along the way as well -- but protecting them from big mistakes. So far things are going really well, and I'm very proud of the kids who have stepped up the challenge (and often surprised by which ones they are). 

So far the kids have created a complete and organized BOM based on a reference machine, and they've been sourcing parts along the way. When the build team gives the BOM team a heads-up when their schedule requires specific parts, and the BOM team works with accounting and the makers to source them on budget. Meantime, the blogger team has started up a website and begun posting, the accounting team has set up a general ledger and is tracking things like donations and budget accounts, the makers have been disassembling old machines to learn how they work and scavenge for parts, and the membership team has gotten a handle on organizing things like team membership, attendance, snacks, and privacy requirements. It's like a little business run by kids! 

This past Friday we got back from a long break and the kids actually started cutting threaded rod -- a big milestone. 

I wanted to share a couple of links so you can keep tabs on what's going on: 

• www.theFrankes.com - My blog site has a lot of posts about the club (and other things) from *my* perspective in reverse chronological order. I'll be updating it soon with even more information. The 3D Printer Club related posts are organized on this page: http://www.thefrankes.com/wp/?page_id=2766 
  
• cpsfcmaker.org - This is the kids' club website. You can see that most of their posts are very simple, and we're working with them on providing more detailed information about what's going on. 
  

I'm also pleased to say that we've seen some great support from the reprap community!

Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions. I'd love to see projects like these starting up elsewhere, which is why I'm trying to publish as much of this as I can. 

-Alex (codecreations)