3D Printing

During our second PBL task, our group had decided we would come up with a lesson that would incorporate digital technology to design and build a model to demonstrate how organs or components of body systems in the human body work and interact with other components.

Part of our group’s solution was to utilize 3D printers to achieve our learning goal. At first, I was a little skeptical. 3D printing? Why? Couldn’t we just use clay for our students to design their organs? Why spend money on these printers?

The first thing that came to mind was the many times I have heard professors at UOIT mentioning the incorrect use of technology. To me, it seemed that 3D printing was just a replacement tool, not a tool that would serve and fulfill a learning goal.

This year, we had the local public library come to our school to give a demonstration on 3D printing to our students (and us teachers). While I had heard about 3D printers, I never saw one in action. I was in awe. What surprised me even more was how accessible they were making 3D printing. Through the library’s website it was possible to access the program to design your object and place a printing order with a minimal cost. Kids could design trinkets and gifts, an even more useful objects such as phone cases.

While I was amused, amazed and thoroughly entertained, I did not stop and think in that particular moment about how I could integrate 3D printing into my own classroom. What I gathered in that 3D printing session was that 3D printing was up and coming and that it had a myriad of possible implementations for the future.

With this experience under my belt, it was no surprise that when my group suggested using the grant money in our PBL proposal for purchasing a 3D printer, I became apprehensive with the idea. I thought that it was a novel idea to get the organs printed, but not one that was worth investing thousands of dollars to purchase the printer itself. Why couldn’t we just use the local library’s services if we were going to use this device as a novelty tool?

As I expressed my thoughts to my group, one of my team members sent me an eye-opening article. It contained 7 reasons why every school should own a 3D printer. Some of the reasons I never considered included how 3D printers can ignite students’ imaginations and introduce them to modern additive manufacturing processes.

The fact is, 3D printing is “now an established industrial technology used for prototyping and manufacturing products and components across a range of industries. It already has applications in many areas of everyday life” (Department for Education, 2013). Having our students understand the application and potential of this technology can prepare them for their future and help them envision tomorrow’s world where this technology will be commonplace.

In addition, just as it was for me, the 3D printer is an automatic engagement factor: “The opportunity to realise a concept or idea quickly into a 3D product is an incredibly powerful teaching tool.”(Department for Education, 2013).

As is the case with every technological tool, how it is embedded within the curriculum and applied within the lesson’s learning goals is the most important factor for educators to consider. There are many ways in which 3D printing can enhance a lesson. It provides educators with the opportunity to create hands- on opportunities for their students and also enables students to develop spatial reasoning. The cross-curricular implementations are also a large part of the appeal in a classroom setting as students can see the real-life connections between math, science, physics and design.

The more I learned about 3D printers and their possible implementations, the more I become aware of the many ways I can incorporate their use in my classroom. The fact they are becoming more affordable is icing to the cake!

I am so glad I learned about 3D printing and its many uses in the realm of education. I am also glad I got to experience this through our PBL task. Once again I am shown the power and authenticity of these projects and how much students can learn from one another when given the opportunity to do so.

References

Department for Education. 3D printers in schools : Uses in the curriculum. (2013, October). Retrieved February 27, 2016, from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/251439/3D_printers_in_schools.pdf

Fisher, T. (n.d.). The Proffesional Practice of Educators. Retrieved February 27, 2016, from http://3dprintingsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/EDP416-Assessment-2.pdf

Krassenstein, E. (2014, December 21). Why 3D Printing Needs to Take Off in Schools Around the World. Retrieved February 27, 2016, from http://3dprint.com/27743/3d-printing-benefits-schools/

N/A. 3D Printers in the Classroom: 7 Reasons Why Every School Should Have a 3D Printer. (2013, February 27). Retrieved February 27, 2016, from http://airwolf3d.com/2013/02/27/school-3d-printers-in-the-classroom/

Response 2 Week #5

In response to: http://aynsleysmith.weebly.com/blog/week-5-one-to-world

Hi Aynsley,

I really enjoyed your post. Your school sounds like they are very serious about technology and its proper implementation. What an Edtech dream school!

I found the One World Pedagogical Model quite fascinating to learn and read about. What captured my attention the most was the goal of using the higher ordered thinking apps in order to achieve participatory teaching. Many of us get caught up using tech, but simply to replace pen and pencil or the like. We need to begin thinking about how technology can help our students differentiate their knowledge and how it can help them apply their thinking too.

I tried clicking the link on the bottom of the video to get a full list of apps CIS uses, but it was broken :(  I am sure that there is a newer version of the working apps your school uses and their purpose, as the one posted was from 2 years ago. If you have any idea where the newer list is, can you please send it my way?

Thanks!

Rachel

Response 2 Week #5

In response to: http://aynsleysmith.weebly.com/blog/week-5-one-to-world

Hi Aynsley,

I really enjoyed your post. Your school sounds like they are very serious about technology and its proper implementation. What an Edtech dream school!

I found the One World Pedagogical Model quite fascinating to learn and read about. What captured my attention the most was the goal of using the higher ordered thinking apps in order to achieve participatory teaching. Many of us get caught up using tech, but simply to replace pen and pencil or the like. We need to begin thinking about how technology can help our students differentiate their knowledge and how it can help them apply their thinking too.

I tried clicking the link on the bottom of the video to get a full list of apps CIS uses, but it was broken :(  I am sure that there is a newer version of the working apps your school uses and their purpose, as the one posted was from 2 years ago. If you have any idea where the newer list is, can you please send it my way?

Thanks!

Rachel

Response 1 Week #5

In response to: http://kj-educ5101.weebly.com/blog/why-i-changed-my-blog-platform#comments

Hey Kyle,

I found your blog entry to be quite relevant and so typical! There you went out of your way to try a new blogging platform to be different and not use the ones typically used and low and behold... it failed you :(

I am glad you were able to evaluate this tool using Chan's checklist. What an authentic experience right there!

I have not used Weebly before, but from what I can tell from the course blogs created, they all look visually appealing and quite easy to use. I myself and happy with Google's Blogger, but I do think that the Weebly websites look more professional! As with many of the other Google apps, I am sure I can do more with it, I just need to spend more time learning how to do it!

Let me know how you enjoy Weebly :)

Rachel

Staying Organized Online Week 5 Blog

I would describe myself as being an organized person. My classroom desk is always clear, everything has a place and if it is not, I find myself feeling anxious and unable to concentrate. At home, I am more flexible, but professionally speaking...I definitely like my order!

As I continue my journey at UOIT and keep learning about edtech, I keep acquiring more and more web tools, apps, sites and articles that I would like to keep for future use. While I am able to sort and organize physical items in life, I find that I have room to  improve when it comes to the virtual world.

Most of what I do today for work, for my own professional development and even socially is through my computer. The amount of time we spend online doesn't seem to condense, in fact, it just gets larger and larger. It seems like there is always something else to learn/ see/ do! Research states that average internet usage time has doubled over the last 10 years (Karaian, 2015).

So what does this mean for me? It means that the amount of information and content I have acquired and will acquired will just keep exponentially growing and it is time for me to start thinking of organizing myself online! Every summer I tell myself I will do this, but I somehow continue putting it off. The result? I now have over 1,000 unread emails (just on my main email account), multiple google drive accounts with unsorted documents, different bookmarks saved in multiple web browsers, and have an inefficient use of many social media accounts.

I decided to focus my blog on learning about some organizational tools that can help me tackle some of my issues...

1.  I started looking at organizing my social media (clearly I am still procrastinating with my document files). If you have been reading my previous blog posts you will know that I have just started using Twitter. I am really enjoying using this social media application, but keep wondering how people are able to effectively use it once they begin to follow multiple users. I was happy to learn about TweetDeck. It is available as a desktop tool that organizes your screen into different columns that you can set up and organize according to what you are interested in staying "on top of". I thought this was a great way to follow certain hashtags and see activities your are interested in on one place. The tool was also very user friendly and took no time to set up. There were multiple youtube videos explaining its use and tricks too.

Through my research, I also found that there were other tools that help integrate multiple social media apps and enable you to post to all at the same time and enable you to even schedule posts (Alternion, Hootsuite). I had not even considered this concept and thought it was a great tool for companies to utilize. They can even track the views of their posts with analytic capabilities the programs offer. Many individuals and business executives have difficulty finding the time to manage their social presence (Zeng, Chen, Lusch, & Li, 2010). , and these tools help overcome this barrier. Many companies realize that:  "If you do not participate in Facebook, YouTube, you are not part of cyberspace anymore. Social Media allow companies to engage in timely and direct end-consumer contact at relatively low cost and higher levels of efficiency than can be achieved with more traditional communication tools"  (Kaplan, 2010).


2.  After learning about organizing social media, I moved on to organizing my research articles. Part of Rob Power's EDUC101G course, includes organizing our research into Zotero. It can be used personally to collect, organize and helps you cite your sources, but also lets you have a collaborative component by creating shared groups. In our course, this is where students can organize their research and it allows others to view/ find articles that may be of interest for us as well. I have taken many other courses through my education career and one of the course requirements I sometimes dread is having to read pre-assigned articles chosen by the instructor. There are times I am really not motivated to read about certain topics and find it more of a nuisance than anything else. I find myself taking up time trying to follow an article that I have no interest in and then later forgetting its contents anyways. Using Zotero to share everyone's articles collected on the course topics gives each student ownership in selecting what interests them and makes the whole experience a much more pleasurable and educational one!


3.  As we navigate through the WWW there are so many tools and sites that we think we would love to save for another time. We click on "save to bookmarks" and before you know it, your browser contains thousands. So how can we keep ourselves organized with bookmarking? Apart from taking the extra step in creating folders to separate bookmarks, I have begun using Delicious. This online program allows you to keep, share and even discover other bookmarks under user-created tags. I find that using this program allows me to access all my bookmarks regardless of what browser I am using. As long as I make sure to label and tag my bookmarks correctly, I can easily retrieve the information I am looking for.


4. As for email and cloud storage clean up? Well...it's time for me to stop procrastinating.  There are a number of tricks I've found on how to organize email, but unfortunately, many are pretty intuitive: schedule emails to be sent later, use labels and folders, using the search button or deleting unnecessary emails (Patel 2012). I just need to sit down with a nice glass of (insert here), turn on some fun music and get to work. I guess that's what happens when you let the clutter accumulate!

References

Kaplan, A. M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1), 59–68.

Karaian, J. (2015, June 1). We now spend more than eight hours a day consuming media. Retrieved February 15, 2016, from http://qz.com/416416/we-now-spend-more-than-eight-hours-a-day-consuming-media/

Patel, A. (2012, February 21). Junk? Spam? Labels? How To Organize Your Inbox. Retrieved February 15, 2016, from: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/02/21/how-to-clean-your-inbox_n_1285511.html

Zeng, D., Chen, H., Lusch, R., & Li, S.-H. (2010). Social Media Analytics and Intelligence. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 25(6), 13–16. http://doi.org/10.1109/MIS.2010.151

Response 2 Week #4

In response to: http://michellerivers13.blogspot.ca/2016/02/week-4-futurity.html


Hi Michelle,

I really enjoyed reading your post! I couldn't agree more with you regarding the drastic role change teachers are having in education. Using you as an example, it is no longer necessary to be the holder of all knowledge. You are new to many of the subjects you are teaching and instead of feeding students with information they can readily find themselves you are facilitating the process and showing them where to find it.

Teaching and learning today is all about the application. What can the learners DO with this information?

I am so glad you are passionate about the subjects you teach. Sounds like you are learning some pretty neat things yourself too!

Response 1 Week # 4

In response to:
 http://joneske4.wix.com/educ-5101#!What-are-reusable-learning-objects/c193z/56b5582c0cf2062bd4197bae

Hi Kyle,

Thanks for defining Reusable Learning Objects! I am sure we have all heard others tell us not to "reinvent the wheel". As educators, lesson planning, unit planning and simply any kind of planning planning takes up most of our time. When I first started teaching I was absolutely run down with the amount of time I would spend on it.

Reusable learning objects exist to enable us to save time so that it does not consume us! Some of the sites I use to get access to lesson ideas and plans I can use in my class include Smart Exchange, TIPS4RM, GAINS, BrainPOP, Teachers Pay teachers and Pinterest.

I see that you are a Clinical Instructor. Do these kinds of learning object repositories exist for you?