3D Printing In Classrooms: Enhances the Learning Process

Transformation of 3D Printing

Today, 3-D printing is a technology that allows people to create three-dimensional physical products and sculptures from a digital computer file attached to a 3D printer. This technology is now used in architecture, construction, industrial design, automotive design, aerospace, military, engineering, medical technology, fashion, footwear, jewelry, eyewear, and even in early childhood classrooms around the world. 3D printing is expected to change how future classroom education is enhanced around the world over the next decade.

3D printing refers to any manufacturing process which additively builds and forms 3D products in layers from computer aided design data and computer programs. 3D technology is significant because it offers a new and direct form of manufacturing, meaning a possible design goes directly from a person directly to a physical product through a computer and a printer. 3D printing starts with a digital file derived from computer aided design (CAD) software. Once a design is completed, it must then be exported as a standard tessellation language (STL) file and the file is then translated into triangulated surfaces and vertices (Cummins, 2010). The STL file then has to be sliced into hundreds, sometimes thousands of 2D layers. A 3D printer then reads the 2D layers as building blocks which it layers one atop the other, forming thin layer of plastic into a three-dimensional object.

3D Printing in Education

Many advanced technologies are expected to help ignite and augment learning processes in classrooms throughout the world over the next decade. 3D printing is positioned as one of the future technologies in the global education system to advance learning processes for children of all ages. Schools all over the world are bringing these powerful and relatively inexpensive printing tool to students in classrooms. For example, China recently put 3D printers in each of its 400,000 elementary schools (Derrick, 2015). In the U.S., many schools are adding 3D printers in order to simplify the learning process of complex subjects and school systems are proposing the inclusion of this technology within their core curriculums.

The adoption of new standards, especially in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), is addressing serious weaknesses in the U.S. current approach to content learning. New standards that actually have strong connections to 3D printing are the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which include learning the engineering design proccess as one of the disciplinary core ideas, starting in kindergarten all the way through high school. Unlike previous standards, the NGSS are less about a specific curriculum and more about how learning takes place.

3D Printing Enhances the Learning Processes

To better understand the connection between these newer 21st century standards and 3D printing, one can use the Common Core Math Standards as an example to map how 3D printing can directly support more advanced learning standards and processes. The following is the list of all eight elements in the Common Core Math Standard:

(1) Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them

(2) Reason abstractly and quantitatively

(3) Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others

(4) Model with mathematics

(5) Use appropriate tools strategically

(6) Attend to precision

(7) Look for and make use of structure

(8) Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

Examining these standards in the context of 3D printing, they all directly align in enhancing the learning process. Virtually all 3D printing project design processes and projects call for accuracy in measurements (Standard 2) along with designs being repeatable as an expression of forethought in design expression (Standard 8). Modeling and designing through the use of mathematics (Standard 4) is also required along with the strategic use of appropriate tools (Standard 5). Precision (Standard 6) is important when attempting to design parts which are needed to fit tighter and making sense of problems which might occur in the design process (Standard 1). The use of structure in 3D designs is a requirement and relates exactly to Standard 7. By students challenging themselves in designing objects for a 3D printer, students need to participate in problem-solving and persevering until the object is made to their satisfaction (Standard 1).

As with the inclusion of computers within school’s overtime, schools will start with one 3D printer and then move to one printer per classroom. 3D digital printers will have a powerful role to play in the classrooms which will begin to regularly support strong curricular connections to modern teaching standards. 3D printing machines will support 21st century curriculum that not only engage students but also teach them how to be “tinkerers” in learning and contributing to society is ways we never thought imaginable (Image, sixth graders make 3D printed prosthetic hands for kids in need).

Jeffrey L. Brown