Visual Design in HS World History

OCTOBER Spotlighting Moore

LISA MURPHY - UPHS

3D PRINTING HIGH SCHOOL WORLD HISTORY
--A SUCCESS STORY WITH A TEMPLATE

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By WILL HERRING

3d Printing in History Class?

Yes! The problem has always been the same with teaching history, right? How do we make something come alive for students that has been dead for decades, centuries, or in the case of world history, millennia? Ms. Murphy and I hoped that visual design software and 3D printers might span that gap making history “tangible”.  We were willing to gamble the increased time spent studying the ancient world would pay off when they see all future learning through the lens of a builder and engineer.

TinkerCad

Our software of choice was a web-based app called TinkerCad. It is a great, lightweight, and Chromebook ready (MCS are 1:1 Chromebooks in 5-12th). It is integrated with Google SSO as well as other social providers, meaning it is just that much easier to go from 0 to 60 with TinkerCad in your classroom. It has a menu of “getting started” type tutorials we used to get the kids to figure out the basics of computer-aided design.

Timeline

We co-taught part of most Thursdays during the first 9 weeks of school.

Week One: Introduction, objectives explained, rubric discussed, and Wonder of the Ancient World (WoW) assigned to groups. With the class size, we were working with, we decided to add an “eighth” WoW to make the groups more manageable (The Great Wall of China). The second half of class was unstructured to allow groups to research the function/purpose, dimensions, era, and location of their assigned WoW.

Week Two: Groups presented their Slides and answered questions from the audience. They were expected to demonstrate an understanding of the purpose and the people that built the assigned WoW.

Week Three: Student groups were taken through two, TinkerCad lessons on shape manipulation in the visual design interface. Students were asked to reflect on their work from the perspective of the Engineering Design Process. They were provided butcher paper, and rulers, calculators to figure the scale for their design to meet our 3D printer’s size.

Week Four: Design day 1. Students went through tutorials about using the ruler, workplane, and alignment tools. Then began designing their structures. Ms. Murphy and I circulated to talk about how to work within a group effectively and troubleshoot any software problems.

Week Five: Design Day 2. Students were given time to complete their structures and export their .stl files for printing.

Week Six: Presentation prep. Students were informed of the expectations for their final presentation. While I was busy putting the 3d printer through its workout around the clock, students went back to their Slides from Week 2, modified historical content to express their increased knowledge, as well as additional information about the design and group work components of their work.

Week Six: Minimal class time allowed for groups to determine responsibilities for the upcoming assembly play day.

Week Seven: Assembly Play Day. I delivered the printed parts, the students assembled them, painted them and added other elements to make the creation more engaging to the audience.

Week Eight: Presentations! I’ll let the students do the talking here! Make sure to note the higher order thinking going on to put this all together.

Extension

Next nine weeks students will select and defend their own ideas for a more modern wonder of the world. We will expand this out to include anything from the locomotive to the Gutenberg Press… as long as they can defend WHY it is a Wonder of the World!