3D Printing and Education

Let’s discuss how 3d printers work in the education industry.

If you don’t know anything about 3d printing or 3d printers, I encourage you to go watch our introduction to 3d printing video first so that you can have a better understanding exactly of what 3d printers are, how they work, and how they’re used. Remember from that video that a 3d printer is just a tool, but any tool that is used properly can be very powerful especially in education.

3d printers encompass stem subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. We call it stream: Science, Technology, Robotics, Engineering, Art and Math. This is because we can now break those subjects down into more focus points. The great thing about 3d printers is they create hands-on, project-based, cross-curricular learning. They’re powerful tools when you can take and put them in front of a classroom full of kids, or you use them to create objects that can make learning a lot more engaging, practical, and interactive.

The first thing we’re going to talk about are the subjects. We have lesson plans that we created to make 3d printing and education very practical together. On our learning website each lesson plan is broken down into specific subjects. Now a lot of these are cross-curricular based lessons so that way they can use blended style learning.

The first subject is science. We have science subjects that cover frog dissection, molecules, rockets, and even chemical reactions.

Technology is the next subject and is quite a big subject. But this is where we cover our 3d modeling lesson so that you can learn without 3d printing. You can also learn things like gaming design and animations with 3d modeling skills.

Robotics is self-explanatory. We have lessons on robotics that cover the basics of what robots are, how kids can design and make their own, or how you can make your own.

The next subject is Engineering. You can do learn things about architecture and different engineering concepts. You can also learn the history of some things like the Louisiana State Capitol building and catapults. You can learn how catapult works and how they are used in math.

Art is one of the biggest subjects that can be covered in 3d printing, because just about everything in 3d printing is 3d modeled and that digital skill can be used in careers like graphic design and illustrations.

Math of course is a big topic. Just about everything in 3d printing is math. Creating models on a computer uses geometric shapes and geometry. Our catapult lesson can be used in math by teaching angles.

Those are some of the specifics on how 3d printing and education work together. We have a website, www.3dxstream-university.com, that we created which is an online learning system that was created to take the pressure off anyone trying to use 3d printers in education.

Whether you’re at home, at a library, at a school, or at a museum you can use this website to learn. You can do this yourself or use it as a teaching tool. All the lessons that are associated on the website

are also broken down by different subjects so filter through them.

I hope you learned how 3d printing and education actually work well together and are very powerful together. The greatest thing is that 3d printers give you the ability to create objects that can be used over and over again therefore saving you money on the back end So using this tool the correct way can be very powerful.