Our Five 3D Printing Tips Featured in THE Journal

Today, my students and I are happy to announce the publication of an article featuring... them!  It's called:

3D Printing in the Classroom: 5 Tips for Bringing New Dimensions to Your Students' Experiences
Advice from a middle school science teacher who uses 3D printing to help students learn design, production and persistence.

The article distilled our interview into the following 5 "tips" -

1. Let the Printer Be the Lesson
2. Consider the After-School Club Approach
3. Admit You Don't Know It All
4. Don't Grade the Results
5. Don't Underestimate the Kids

My favorite quote they included is "Your students will help you learn, Mytko said. "Be really honest," she advised. "I think teachers are used to being the experts in the classroom. We need to admit to kids when we're not the experts and ask them for their help in learning together. We approach the whole Maker Monday thing as a team effort."

Mytko acknowledged that while coming clean can be "academically humbling," it avoids the added embarrassment of having the kids "see right through that — especially at the middle-school level."

So true!

Here are the kids featured in the article: 

Cole and his iPad (previous post)

Hayley & Inika designing their picture frames (previous post)

Finally, here's a link to the curriculum mentioned in the article. I wrote this back in July, and have since learned a lot through implementing our Maker Mondays.  I hope to use winter break as a time to revise and update my plans to better reflect the "better practices" we've developed!