How I Learn

3D Printing/Modeling

3D Printer Explanation

Back in 2018, I had just accepted a STEM Teaching position and an innovative local educator came to our school to show us how to incorporate technology into our instruction. 3D printing was one of his classes. I attended it and was instantly sold.

Soon after, it just so happened our school had a budget surplus and my principal funded five 3D printers for my new STEM classroom, among other emerging technologies.

I had absolutely no experience working with 3D printers, slicing software, stl files, etc. So, the way I learned was to reach out to my PLN on social media and identify good resources. The printers arrived on a Thursday and I spent the next entire weekend (and I mean the entire weekend) diving into the excited world of 3d printing.

That year I had so much learning from the global 3d printing community and I even spoke at conferences locally, regionally, and nationally about the topic!

Micro:bit Pinball Machine

That same school year we were using the 6th Grade PLTW (Project Lead the Way) curriculum when learning coding with Micro:bits. Now this could have been very exciting, but the skills were taught in isolation.

I decided to try to find a more engaging way of delivering the instruction, so I scoured the internet looking for projects and finally found it. One innovative educator overseas made a cardboard pinball machine incorporating Micro:bits.

Like the previous example, I devoted an entire weekend towards both learning how to program all of the Micro:bits for different purposes and integrating it creatively into the pinball machine.

I decided to also incorporate 3D Modeling into the project when planning the design using Sketchup 😃 !

Pinewood Derby Cars

Back in 2017, I accepted a newly created job with the task of integrated high school mathematics curriculum with high school science. I ended up calling it HS STEAM.

At the close of the first unit on motion, I wanted to create a project which could tie everything together and bring the unit "to life" for the kids. I scoured the internet and found Pinewood Derby Cars. I decided that all of my students were going to create cars and experiment with all of the calculations they learned about: velocity, speed, acceleration, etc.

My first step was to figure out how to make a wooden car, so I devoted the whole weekend towards building my sample. After I figured out the steps to building it, I was ready to introduce the project to my students but there were some significant challenges.

The challenges were that the principal didn't have any funding opportunities and I had nowhere for the students to build their cars. So, I crowdfunded as best I could and transformed our classroom into an actual woodshop! High school kids in North Philadelphia (not the best neighborhood) were using power tools every day for two weeks, and no one got hurt except for me 😆 .

QR Codes for Parent Attendance

Back in 2019, an administrator asked me to come up with a way for parents to scan QR codes to log attendance at school events. At the time, I had no idea how to do it. However, after some research into the coding, I made it happen. Here is the video tutorial to show how I did it!