3-D Printer Proving Ground: Models Meet Their Match in Elementary Classrooms

Kids in the classroom are learning how technology works by fabricating 3-D copies of their favorite things.

Cornell University’s Computational Synthesis Lab – headed by Hod Lipson, Cornell associate professor of engineering – has been awarded a share of a MacArthur “Reimagining Learning” Competition grant to bring the three-dimensional printers to public elementary school classrooms.

The goal: Get young children to feel comfortable with engineering.

Lipson’s lab makes three-dimensional printers compatible with an endless array of materials – from Play-Doh, cookie dough and chocolate to polymers and metals – which allows a kid to make 3D objects right on their desktop. These printers read an electronic blueprint and then a nozzle, filled with appropriate materials, builds a replica.

Using a 3-D printer, the students at the Cayuga Heights Elementary School in Ithaca, N.Y., made a small space shuttle from two colors of Play-Doh. Lipson says: “Ultimately what we really want is to have a personal fabricator in every classroom, just like there is a personal computer in every classroom.”

The grant – one of a handful selected from among hundreds of applicants worldwide – was awarded to Glen Bull, University of Virginia professor of instructional technology, who will spearhead the Fab@School effort to create curriculum and data collection around digital fabricators for classrooms in Virginia. Lipson is part of that effort.

The MacArthur grant was $185,000. The Digital Media and Learning Competition is funded by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation to the University of California Humanities Research Institute and Duke University and is administered by the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC), a virtual network of learning institutions.

The grant will allow the Fab@Home project team, headed by Jeffrey Lipton, Cornell doctoral student, to design and build five more printers appropriate for use in elementary school classrooms.

Anyone can download the open-source plans to build the printers. The latest version can be built with about $1,600 worth of off-the-shelf parts.

The Fab@School Web site: http://www.dmlcompetition.net/pligg/story.php?title=630

The Fab@Home Web site:
http://fabathome.org

Media Contact

Blaine Friedlander Newswise Science News

More Information:

http://www.cornell.edu

All latest news from the category: Science Education

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Speaking without vocal cords, thanks to a new AI-assisted wearable device

The adhesive neck patch is the latest advance by UCLA bioengineers in speech technology for people with disabilities. People with voice disorders, including those with pathological vocal cord conditions or…

New yttrium-hydrogen compounds discovered

Researchers at the University of Bayreuth have made a significant scientific breakthrough by discovering new yttrium-hydrogen compounds having serious implications for the research on high-pressure superconductivity. High-pressure superconductivity refers to…

New AI model detects ninety percent of lymphatic cancer cases

Medical image analysis using AI has developed rapidly in recent years. Now, one of the largest studies to date has been carried out using AI-assisted image analysis of lymphoma, cancer…

Partners & Sponsors