Bringing Ideas to Life in Social Studies

In Social Studies the students spent some time learning about Early Societies (e.g. Ancient Chinese, Greeks, Egyptians, etc). As a whole class, we learned about the Six Indigenous Nations and how they lived. In particular, we examined such things as their family life, dress, food, housing, transportation, technology, and art. After we worked together to learn about the Six Nations, the students were given the opportunity to focus in on an Early Society of interest. They researched their chosen society, created a Google Slides presentation, presented it to the class, and compared their chosen society to at least two other societies that were researched. They also shared a 3D printed object and explained how it assisted with their learning and reasons for its creation.

Together, we created a Slides template of the minimum requirements and then students started to work independently to gather information, make sense of it, and incorporate it into their presentation. The students were also provided with the opportunity to design and print an artifact connected to their learning. The idea was to give the students one more way to demonstrate their learning by using the 3D printer. Many students took advantage of the opportunity to create an artifact - many used the 3D technology but some decided to use cardboard and plasticine. Nevertheless, the majority of the kids were excited and motivated to learn, design, and create. 

As I have come to learn over the span of this school year, the 3D printed thoughts and ideas that have been brought to life are only 1 piece of the learning puzzle. They are proud of the physical representations of their learning. They hold them, manipulate them, and pass them around - they are symbols of their hard work and new learning. I love seeing the excitement on their faces but the best part for me is listening to them as they talk about their artifacts. THAT is where the rubber meets the road. Sure, it's great to see that they successfully took their abstract thoughts and brought them to life using technology and a design process, but when they start to talk about what their artifacts represent, I get a direct route to their their thinking, the connections they make/made, the way they apply what they have learned, and the process they followed to arrive to the end product. There isn't too much prodding on my part, I just ask a question or two and they do the rest of the work. 

Below are photos of some of the cool creations that have been printed and discussed. 

Ancient Chinese food prepared and placed on a platter. Great discussion about Chinese food and how it differs from what we eat today.

Ancient Egypt: the Greek God Anubis who is associated with mummification and the afterlife. Designing this object proved to be difficult for the student so she found a design on the internet and then customized it and printed it.

Medieval Times: Bow, arrows, and bucket for arrows. This artifact was created around the ideas of technology, security, and hunting for food. 

Medieval Times: a great castle that would house royalty and other important people. Protection and architecture were the main themes to come from this artifact. 

Ancient Greece: a vase that is also 'art'. Lots of talk about arts and culture here.

Ancient Greece: a structure that is stereotypical of Ancient Greek architecture.    

Ancient Egypt: a 3D printed camel that aided in talks about transportation, animals, and culture. 

Ancient Greece: Medusa and the stories that go along with her.

With June right around the corner, it will be interesting to see what direction the students take next with respect to the 3D technology in our classroom. It continues to be a lot of fun and a wonderful learning journey. Just last week, a new student joined our class community. As with most new people to our class, she was surprised to see the printer and wondered how it worked. The students had no problem explaining it to her and how we are using it for our learning. One of the students took the time to print her a flexible bracelet so she could see how it works and to have her very own artifact to take home and use to explain to her family. It was a great reminder of the opportunity we have at our disposal this school year. It even led to a powerful classroom meeting about making the most of opportunities that come our way and the idea that we have a lot to be thankful for. 

Thanks for reading. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below. You can also connect with me via email and on Twitter. 

All In A Day's Work

The 3D printer is becoming more accessible to the students as each day passes. Some students are comfortable with the process while others are still in the valley of the learning pit.

This is not a problem, in fact, it is something that we celebrate often - with all the learning that we engage in. Learning is all about taking risks, making mistakes, making connections, and having fun. Incorporating a design mindset and having the technology to bring ideas to life in our class provides the students with wonderful learning opportunities.

A great example of this is something that happened yesterday. During self selected reading time, one of my students read something - causing him to reflect on and create an idea that he had. 

He sketched out a picture of what he saw in his mind: Timothy the Toaster. A toaster with a top hat, moustache, and a monacle. 

After he drew it, he asked if he could grab a Chromebook and use the 3D software to try and replicate his drawing. I told him that would be ok - he would have to squeeze it into our day. He used his time wisely and it didn't take him too long to create Timothy using Tinkercad.

He had completed the "hard work". The students often tell me that printing their work is easy but that getting their ideas out of their heads and on to paper (or Google Drawings/Tinkercad) is the tough part. 

With only about an hour and a half left in the school day, he asked if we could print  Timothy the Toaster. We got things going, shrunk his design to be able to print it in an hour (his original design called for a 5 hour print job), and we were off to the races.

By the end of the day he had his Toaster rounded and was showing his classmates and talking about his ideas for a story that he would like to put together about the Toaster. I asked him what else he might do and he spoke of other characters that would be part of all of this.

With minutes left in our day I asked him about the process he followed around this particular activity. He told me how excited he was when he realized that he could make something that had never existed. He spoke about how much fun it was to manipulate the software to create what he had seen in his mind and drew on paper. 

I told him that I wanted to talk to him about this experience in greater depth after he had some time to think about what he had engaged in, his motivation, challenges he experienced, and his feelings after the fact. 

I look forward to hearing what he has to say, watching him formally share his thinking with his classmates, and seeing/hearing what they do next. 

Creativity and Tech Integration in Writing - Part 2

The students are finishing up the fictional narratives that they have been working on for the past couple of weeks. I have been meeting with them and talking to them about their work and their 3D artifacts. It seems to be an engaging and empowering process - to take imaginative ideas and slowly bring them to life and then take them back to the imagination. They created fictional characters in their mind, brought them to life using 3D technology, and then wrote a fictional story. While having a lot of fun, they have been busy crafting their stories, peer editing, proofreading, rehearsing oral presentation, and reflecting on the feedback provided to them.

To get a better understanding of our plan, check out the Part 1 blog post.

Here are some examples of how the intersection between curriculum, technology, and creativity have come together:

Snowy the Easter Bunny

Blossom

Shimer

Smokey the Grape

Johnny and Egg Boy

I'm especially proud of the following piece of writing and 3D artifact. It was created and written by a new student in my class. He arrived two weeks ago from the Middle East. He doesn't speak a lot of English but was intrigued by the 3D printer and what the other students were doing. He learned how to use Tinkercad and came up with a cool idea about what he wanted to share with us. He created 'King Boy' and with the help of a few students, wrote a story. On top of being dropped into a foreign culture and immersed in a language he doesn't know, he has taken some big risks. This assignment has provided him with a way to connect with the other students. 

After the students finish up their writing they want to formally present their work and then display their writing and artifacts for others to see. Its been and exciting process so far and look forward to what we do next.

I would love to hear your thoughts about the work we have done. Please feel free to leave a comment!

Failure & The Joy That Can Come From It

It's become common practice in our classroom to check in on our 3D printing jobs within the first 10-15 of printing. If things are going to go bad, it usually happens within that time frame.

When things aren't going as planned, we cancel the print job and then analyze what went wrong and when it happened (with respect to our design). These are our failures, that is what we call them. 

It's never easy to 'fail' but we always learn something new and share our learning with everyone so we can try and avoid the same problems that led to the fail. I have been enjoying the failures as much as the successes. When I see a flaw in a design I will talk to the student about it and ask whether they see what I am referring to. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they make changes to their design, and sometimes they don't. Some of them need to fail in order to learn and some of them do what they can to avoid it.

Nevertheless, the learning (creativity, collaboration, communication) is great!

Here are some examples of our recent failures:

The failures above have led to the successes below:

I'm thankful for the prompting I recieved to write this post. My students recently asked me if I had shared their failures with all of you. One of them asked if I had written about the creations that didn't work out. They also made a comment about all the photos I have taken of their failures. Apparently I am as excited to photograph the failures as I am of the successes!

I do believe it is important to reflect on and share the good and bad moments of any learning journey. If we frame success around the process of learning and the growth that comes from it, then we are sure to feel a sense of success and accomplishment no matter what the final outcome is. This is something that I am constantly working on incorporating in my life and that of my students lives. It is not an easy task, but it certainly is a worthwhile one.

The students are still working on writing their fictional narratives so stay tuned for a blog post about what they ended up creating and how it helped them with their writing!

Creativity and Tech Integration in Writing - Part 1

An informal brainstorming session with +Jonathan So, a good friend and colleague, led my students and I down the road of a character development idea that would fit in nicely with writing. Our talk provided me with some sparks on how to hook my students into doing some writing while having the opportunity to be creative, integrate some helpful technology, and bring their ideas to life.

The task is to create a fictional character and then weave him/her/it into some narrative writing. We started by talking about internal and external character traits and then started to develop our own characters. The students were provided with a graphic organizer where they would draw a picture of their character in the middle and then list their external and internal traits on either side of the character. Here are a few examples:

After the students finished getting their rough ideas on paper, we thought it would be a great to start a Google Doc in order to have all our ideas in a central place where we could look at each others work, share our thoughts, and even grab some inspiration (whether we are at school or at home, an Internet connection is all that is needed to visit the work anytime, any day). I created the Doc and placed it in our D2L (Learning Management System) site. From there, the students could easily access it and start working. This is what it looks like:

As the students recorded their ideas from the work they did on their graphic organizer, they asked if they could include a picture of their character in the Google Doc. Why not? I told them that they could use Google Draw Drawings to recreate what they drew on their graphic organizer - they obliged!

The students have done a wonderful job of using their time effectively and putting in an honest effort. They are enjoying themselves and working hard as they think about their creations and how they want to develop their character. The work they are doing has captured their attention and they are responding well to the failure they are experiencing along the way and to the feedback I am providing them with. 

As they wrap up this portion of their writing activity, they will begin to work on taking their 2D drawings and transforming them into a 3D drawings. They will also start writing their narrative, staring their created character. They will use Tinkercad to turn their characters into tangible 3D products and will receive instruction on how to take their creative ideas and form a short narrative that makes sense and is entertaining. 

Make sure to check back with us to see the awesome stories and 3D artifacts that are created!

  

Bringing Ideas to Life: Using 3D Technology and a Design Mindset - Project Update

With the new year under way I wanted to take some time to reflect on the last 4 months and report on the progress and setbacks of our journey to bring our thinking to life. My last post, wishing everyone a Merry 3D Christmas, was our end to 2015 and it was a great way to wrap up the year. I won't talk too much about it because it is a recent post but it was a great culminating activity to end 2015. I had to sit on my hands to not post it sooner than Dec 24 :)

In Science we had gone on a field trip to the Laurel Creek Conservation Area where we explored animal habitats. One of the activities the students participated in involved learning about animal skulls and teeth and how those characteristics help the animals survive. Many of the students started thinking about the knowledge they had gained and how they could apply what they learned in order to create their own animal skull. They talked about their ideas feverishly and wanted to start getting their ideas out of their heads and into Tinkercad to make their thoughts come to life. It was great to hear the students talk about their ideas and how they were connected to what they learned on the trip. Some of them planned out their thinking and what they wanted to do and other students just started creating and then demonstrated their understanding based on what they had learned. They all had the same goal but didn't all go about getting there the same way. As they worked on creating an artifact of their learning I questioned them, provided them with feedback, and explored their wonders with them.

Here are some photos of one of the skulls that were printed:

As you can see, the student had some issues with the top teeth of his skull. This led to questions about how to design in a way that would avoid this. One student suggested designing the top and bottom of the skull separately and then putting them together after printing. Another student suggested having more of a closed mouth where top teeth and bottom teeth could overlap in ways that would allow the printer to do its job but not ruin the aesthetics of the artifact. Lots of great discussion and new learning, both of which are a teachers dream!

We used social media to tweet the Conservation Area about the skull that was created and they asked if they could have a photo. This is what we sent them:

We tried printing other skulls but had some difficulty. Students hadn't corrected the issue with the top teeth so the printer wasn't able to create an artifact that was recognizable. This also led to many printer jams and a lot of wasted time. The designs would take close to two hours to print and we tried not to print anything when we weren't in the classroom. This didn't leave us with as much time as we thought we had! Needless to say, time is a big factor and is needed when printing our work. This new learning came in handy when we designed and printed our Christmas tree ornament and allowed us to create what we had envisioned and then shrink our artifact to a reasonable size that would reduce print time. It was one of our finest hours.

In Social Studies we were learning about Political and Physical Regions of Canada. As we discovered and talked about the various physical regions the students thought it would be cool if they designed their own - based on the information they got from me and their own research (mostly web based). They were fascinated by the Western Cordillera and started expressing THEIR thoughts and ideas. Again, this was wonderful for me to see and hear. Students got themselves together into groups and used their talents and gifts to work together towards a goal that they had established. Here are some samples of their work:

Lots of great conversation/discussion before the printing and lots more after the printing. The students treat their creations like they are valuable minerals. I shouldn't joke too much because to them, these creations mean a lot. They truly are artifacts of their learning - that what they were interested in, thought about, and talked about could be brought to life using the right tools to make it happen. 

What I haven't mentioned in this post yet is all the talk I hear when students are working on designing their creations. They talk about measurement, proportion, grid location, shape, spatial orientation, and design, to name a few. They are taking what they know (and what they don't know) and converging all of it into a focused beam of energy to make their ideas a reality. 

Before the Science and Social Studies, we had some fun with our learning in Mathematics. You can read more about that experience here. The students did some amazing work around creating representations of 4 digit numbers. It was a success in so many ways - design and printing.

And then there was our very first venture - learning to use Tinkercad. We were talking about Rocks and Minerals in Science and the task was to create your very own Mineral!! A fun activity that would allow the students to demonstrate their learning. This proved to be a bit much for all of us. We ended up retreating and used Google Drawing to help us win our battle. I wrote about our experience - it was early on in our journey and looking back on it, very valuable to our development and understanding around design thinking. We didn't end up printing anything but what the students created was fantastic. They showed their competence with respect to Google Apps for Education (GAFE - particularly Drawing), which has proven to be a solid foundation for the 3D work we are doing today.

Even though its only been 4 months, it seems as though we have been at this for a lot longer. As I said above, Google Apps for Education has helped us build a solid competence from a technological and design standpoint. I saw this capacity grow in previous years with my grade 2 classes and that is where the idea of using 3D technology came to me. The evolution I envisioned is coming to fruition which excites me for the future. I look forward to continued sharing in the coming months as we learn new things and allow our imagination to run wild to bring ideas to life.