In Room 309 of Willow Lane Elementary School, Julia Dweck teaches her fourth-grade gifted class about 3-D printing technology.

At nearly 9 and 10 years old, these students possess a hunger for more knowledge and eagerly await more information about the innovative technology.

At the end of November, Dweck introduced her students to the concept. They moved on to design, print and color their own 3-D printed characters as bookmarks.

To begin the process, Dweck asked her students to design storybook characters by utilizing visual and spatial skills to reinterpret them in pixelated forms in Google Sheets. From there, Dweck converted screenshots of these characters into a Scalable Vector Graphic, or SVG file.

These files are then uploaded into TinkerCad, a 3-D model program where students make any necessary design changes before importing the files into Slicer.

Slicer, a software, converts these images to specifically communicate with the 3-D printer to appropriately create the students’ designs.

To utilize the most of their time learning about 3-D printing, Dweck decided to only use the 3-D printer for the outline of the characters and introduce her students to another 3-D tool: the 3Doodler Start. This tool acts as a handheld 3-D printer the students can physically use, opposed to watching a machine fill in their characters. 3Doodler acts as a child-friendly glue gun; the pen tip does not heat up and the filament the pen excretes is warm to the touch.

By using the 3Doodler, students learn from a hands-on experience of 3-D printing from a pen. Dweck also explained this tool allows the students to experiment with their designs; they can simply peel off the filament and start over.

Dweck favors the versatility of the 3Doodler as it allows the students to learn from their mistakes and continue exploring other designs.

“It’s really exciting to see the students want to take on this new technology,” Dweck said.

“Unlike adults, they’re not fearful. They’re ready to take risks; they make mistakes and they learn from them – what more could a teacher want? That’s what we want. It sets a good example for how you should learn in any subject: if it doesn’t come out right the first time... you make a change. That whole design philosophy and design way of thinking is something that’s helpful for students across the curriculum.”

Through the progressive push to integrate Maker Movement efforts into schools, Dweck wishes to teach her students different lessons through hands-on learning. The Maker Movement emphasizes this type of active learning, especially within social environments.

With this mindset, Dweck framed this project to serve a live audience – Willow Lane kindergarteners – and teach them empathy through benefitting someone other than themselves, as well as encouraging them to express their ideas by transferring an idea into a physical object.

“I think there’s something very powerful about taking something – an idea, a concept – from your mind and creating a tangible object with it,” Dweck said. “So, you’re standing there, you’re watching [the 3-D printer] and you’re excited because it’s something that you brought into the world that is about to become something that you can share with others. It has a real audience, that’s why we’re going to be sharing them at the book fair; to show that it’s not just something that you’re creating for yourself... So, I think it teaches empathy because you’re making it for someone else, it’s not just your own needs and desires. I think it’s the technology of our time.”

As Dweck hopes, her students receive the lesson well and enjoy improving from their mistakes.

“If you make a mistake [when] drawing [with the 3Doodler] …if you wanna restart you can pull it off and do another [design],” Kritha Barath said.

Dweck’s students relish in this new information and excitedly await opportunities to learn more.

“I was really excited [to learn about 3-D printing] especially because you can use 3-D printers for all [types of] careers,” Barath said.

Barath’s classmate Ryan Powell shared the same mindset.

“It’s really cool to create whatever you want, especially because it’s 3-D,” Powell said. “...I want to be [an] auto engineer, so in the future, I think it might be more popular to make stuff with [a] 3-D printer.”

To Dweck, teaching her students about this developing technology is more than her job; arming her students with new information is invaluable.

“As I said to the kids at the beginning of our session, a lot of people think it’s just a fun little novelty type thing, but it’s actually becoming integral to more and more careers,” Dweck said.

“I feel it’s important to introduce it to students and make that connection so even if you’re going to be a baker and not an engineer, you could be using the 3-D printer in your bakery. You could be a doctor and you could be using it to 3-D print internal organs or bones that need to be replaced. I feel like it’s something that the more we share with students and the more they understand, they’ll have a leg up moving forward.”

The bookmarks were for sale and on display at Willow Lane’s Scholastic Book Fair Dec. 3-6.