3D Print Lesson Plans With Hélène Trudeau, A Southern California-Based Arts Education Consultant

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3D Printing is a multidisciplinary program that brings together art, math, and science. As the school days are fast-approaching, educators better shape up in developing new lesson plans and programs that fit to what the subject requires. In this episode, Tom and Tracy Hazzard get help from Southern California-based Arts Education Consultant, Hélène Trudeau, on planning 3D Print Lessons. She talks about the multidisciplinary approaches called upon by Common Core and 3D Printing, taking that in mind before entering into your curriculum 3D Print Lessons. Together with Tom and Tracy, they then discuss turning STEM into STEAM and practical application with design-process thinking. As a multidisciplinary program, 3D Print Lesson Plans require careful planning and consideration. Absorb as much information as you can in this great conversation with Hélène.

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Listen to the podcast here:

3D Print Lesson Plans With Hélène Trudeau, A Southern California-Based Arts Education Consultant

Back to School and back to developing new lesson plans and programs for teachers, administrators and PTAs everywhere. Although the Common Core may have a bad rap with some, we learned from Southern California-based Arts Education Consultant, Hélène Trudeau that it actually brings an encouragement for multi-disciplinary approaches to teaching and cross-overs between departments. So, begin to enter into your curriculum 3D Print Lesson Plans, the most obvious cross-over between art, math and science. Turn STEM into STEAM and practical application with design-process thinking. But these 3D Print Lesson Plans like any multi-disciplinary program require careful planning and consideration, so sit in with us while we discuss some of the questions and issues Hélène has found as she begins planning future 3D Print Lesson Plans.

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We have decided to continue our discussion about education and 3D printing. Mainly because we were contacted by an Arts Education Consultant for Southern California, Hélène Trudeau. She is looking at trying to figure out what a 3D printing program might look like in a school. We thought we’d share that discussion that we’re having back and forth about it. She’s asking us for advice and we’re looking to find out more about what’s going on in the school system. It’s interesting and it’s a good discussion because these kinds of discussions need to be going on across the country.

We’ve talked with Brian Federal and John Bokla before all about education and 3D printing. We’ve had those discussions and they’ve been some of our most popular episodes. We definitely want to keep this going at various times over the show. This particular angle of it is an interesting idea like, “How do you prepare a proposal? What would it look like? What should a curriculum look like?” There are lots of things to consider. She’s going to talk about Common Core and a bunch of other things that factor into it. It’s interesting both as a parent and as a 3D print designer. I hope everybody enjoys our discussion and it spurs lots of questions with you.

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Hélène, please tell us a little bit about yourself and why 3D printing?

I started my career as a dancer and choreographer, but I had a passion for education. As you work in the arts as a dancer and artist, you always crossover other art forms. As a dancer, you work with music, sets and visual arts because of that work with costumes. You have exposure to all the arts. I do respect all the arts, but I eventually combine my love of the arts with my love of children. I ended up running programs through the Performing Arts Center, a program for children, families and teachers. I have worked on bringing the arts into the schools, training teachers in the arts and also, training artists in education. I’m fascinated by what is possible through 3D printing and it’s one of the most obvious areas where the crossover between art and science exists.

Is that easier to bring that in because there’s a science aspect to it? Does that make it easier for you?

In a way, yes. I don’t know yet because I haven’t started. I’m just exploring the possibilities. You’re probably aware that new education standards were adopted and on national, they’re called the Common Core Standards. One of the interesting things about the Common Core is that they foster a multidisciplinary approach, especially with the arts. They want to be an integral part of the curriculum. When you deal with the arts, you end up through the art experience addressing all modalities of learning, visual, auditory and kinesthetic. That gives a chance to every child to shine.

If somebody is not learning well by listening, they can be learning well by being physically involved or by being visually stimulated. In addition, what we see in the arts is when you undertake an art project, there are always multiple perspectives and solutions that emerge. Whereas in more traditional teaching, you would have a question and a correct answer. In the arts, there are many possibilities. The arts, as Elliot Eisner would say, “Traffic into subtleties. Traffic into multi-perspectives.” You can learn not only about science through the arts, but about the cultures. It’s a window to the world for many children.

We couldn’t agree more and that’s why we have art degrees. We absolutely believe in that. I grew up in the California school system. I grew up in the Irvine Unified School District, which is where we’re based. I can remember having an art teacher who came into our classroom in Grammar School once every six weeks because she had to go around to many classes and many schools, so we didn’t get art at all. I’m thrilled that there is more integration into the programs that are going on. I’m surprised as a parent that the Common Core has helped that. It seems opposite to me because you hear Common Core and all you think about is horrendous testing.

The confusion comes. It’s not the standards themselves that are throwing people off. There are a lot of benefits to the Common Core Standards and the testing is still being developed. The tricky part is the testing and the transition, but the Common Core themselves offers a wonderful perspective. Also, taking into consideration what we call 21st century learners with technology is extremely important and all methods are not adequate anymore. Students have to be able to create, change, adapt and invent even their own work. One of my favorite books about that is by Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind. It says why right brainers will rule the future. It’s quite interesting as a perspective.

We think that our success as designers have come from being more balanced right and left. While we did go to art school, I wouldn’t say we were less artistic than others, but we were more right-brained than others. Tom had strength in math and I had strength in science. We both felt that we came in with more analytical strengths when we went to art school and that balanced us. Our success is that. If we can give that to our kids, that would be fantastic.

I’d like to give you an example of what can happen when people are open to different perspectives, which are provided through the arts. Anytime I feel like when you study something in-depth with anything, you always end up crossing over other topics. The Common Core is acknowledging that and they also acknowledge that it’s important to make connections and have multiple perspectives. For example, in the high school where I work, a math teacher decided she would send them to art workshops as professional development. All teachers were invited to attend a design workshop, drawing, basic theater. It was a day where you would immerse. It ignited a spark in her. She decided that she was going to teach geometry concepts through works of art.

What she chose was interesting. Those concepts evolve because the students took into it. It’s like, “In that piece, what do you see? Where are the triangles? Where are the connections?” They moved into three-dimensional art. To make a long story short, they ended up doing a fashion show, illustrating the geometry concept. All their garments were made of materials that they recycled. They had dresses, headpieces and all kinds of things, but it was all illustrating principles of geometry they had learned. They did a fashion show where the teachers model the garments. This is a great example. The students would talk about the hem of a dress and it was a parable line. It was a different approach to things, but they will never forget that.

That’s why 3D printing is perfect for that because it’s an applied science, art and mathematics. It’s all of those things together. When you apply something, you learn it in a more in-depth way.

That’s definitely happening. We found that with our daughter. She’s starting to use a Tinkercad tutorial series and learn how to create three-dimensional geometry in the computer that will eventually be 3D printed. You can’t do that without learning what different kinds of geometry are? What is a pyramid, sphere and cube? How to cut, subtract and add different parts to each other? They inherently learn mathematics and geometry doing this. It’s a great way and the applied version of it is always a great way to do that because all of those senses get touched.

There’s more application to the arts than people realize because every design piece, whether it’s a piece of furniture or the garment we wear every day, there’s a design decision that was made before we do it. There’s so much we take for granted. Whether it’s the dishes that we use, the chairs or the clothing, it’s full of design decisions. When you can take the arts and apply it, one of the aspects that fascinates me the most about 3D printing is the possible application in the medical field. The construction of lifelike limbs for people is fascinating.

Artists create beauty and it’s therapeutic for everybody. They express all kinds of things. Even when it’s not beautiful, it’s still a message and it makes statements. To be able to apply it so concretely, for example, helping handicapped people live better is extraordinary. The Common Core is a few years old but there were skaters that were thinking that way several years before. We have high schools that have created academies and career pathways. Trade schools have disappeared and there are not many trade schools left, which is a good thing. What many high schools are doing is that they create pathways. For example, manufacturing and engineering academy.

It’s almost like having a minor or something in high school level.

We see that more and more. It’s an opportunity to bring in 3D printing. I’m thinking that there’s a lot of application, but chances are when it starts coming into high school, the students are going to tell us many ways of applying those things. 3D printing is a multidisciplinary subject. If you were to bring 3D printing in a high school, where would you start? What would be the prerequisite to be able to be successful with 3D printing?

This is what a lot of people are struggling with when they want to say, “I want to bring this into my child’s school.” As a parent, I want to propose this to my school district. As an educator, you want to bring that in. That’s the same problem, “Where do I go? What department do I start it?” Because it’s multidisciplinary, we find that sometimes it got brought in because there was a progressive science teacher or an art teacher who happened to push hard for it. It happens that way a lot of times, but there isn’t a clear path. Our experience from having worked with a couple of people in the education side of 3D printing who are teaching it in schools and other places have been that the computer skills must come first.

 

They have to come first because if students don’t create their own objects to print on these 3D printers, all they’re learning is how to operate a machine. There’s little to be learned in that. If they’re learning CAD even at a basic level, creating three-dimensional geometry and learning about how that geometry is then translated into what the 3D printer can do, they’re learning all kinds of valuable skills. They’re understanding the geometry and creativity more and then they’re seeing how something goes from on their screen to physical reality in a short period of time.

It’s basic computer. When we started with our six-year-old, we had to teach her how to use a mouse because she was so used to touchscreens. We took that for granted. We were like, “She can handle the computer. She’s been doing the iPad for years so no problem,” but it’s different. Making sure that kids get that skill under their belt before they start would be a great way. I don’t think they need advanced geometry concepts because even Linnea at six grasps the idea of what a cylinder and a cone are. She may not be able to name them all the time, but she certainly can recognize them.

Those software for young people are intuitive and visual in terms of what you’re choosing to use. You can see it all, but in order to do some significant model creation, you need to be at a level where you can read. We’re talking about middle school and high school, so everybody is going to have reading skills for sure. A lot of them will have computer skills, but some of them don’t or even some schools are lacking in computers.

In elementary school especially. When you get to middle school, it’s a little better. We still have some places where students in high school have access to a computer, but they don’t necessarily have computers at home. Assuming that we have the average American student who has a computer and has basic computer skills, this is where we would start.

It’s a good idea that they have a geometry class or have had that, which usually comes right about 6th to 7th grade.

8th or 9th.

It’s somewhere in there. It just depends on their age. Somewhere in that middle school to the start of high school, you have geometry. That’s a good thing to have had first. It’s not necessary as Tom was pointing out because of the way the software is written. It’s a good thing because they can do more with what they know and what they’ve already learned. They’re going to see they’ve learned this. It happens that way in all kinds of math and science classes where you’re like, “What am I ever going to do with this?” You learned it and now you have something to do with it. That’s always a good follow up from a class. Students would be more engaged and probably the math and some of the science lessons would sink in more if they are able to apply that in another way.

We have the basic computer skills and geometry would help and then you move into web design and color chemistry.

In the state of 3D printing, you don’t need color initially because you need to start with a single color printer. The multicolor printers aren’t successful yet.

They’re extraordinarily expensive if they are successful.

They’re difficult, so the single color is okay because there are multiple things you can do like create multiple parts and put them together. Kids can be creative with that, so it’s not a problem. There’s definitely a lot of creative work going on. The first thing when you’re talking about the multidisciplinary is you have to bring the art and design in at some point. They have to decide what to make and what to do. There are always shapes in the geometry and there’s all the math about the sizing and the measurements. All of that is built into the software to force them to learn those concepts in order to create what they want.

In order to decide what you want to make, that’s an artistic decision. That’s what we started with Linnea. We forced her to sketch an idea first of what she wanted to make on that machine. She’s immersed in what we print every day. She sees stuff come out of that machine all the time. She has a concept of what it can do. It’s important that you give them lots of ideas and inspiration for where to go with that. A lot of people don’t have that design inspiration built-in, that artistic expression. They don’t tap into it easily. Kids do more than others, but they also are afraid. They don’t want their friends to see, “That’s what you want to print?” We have to open their minds up and let them do that. We do that by sketching.

When we went to art school at Rhode Island School of Design, we have what we call the Freshmen Foundation. At this stage at Rhode Island School of Design, they’re teaching 3D printing within the 3D design courses in Freshmen Foundation. You have to step through the idea of line, form, shape and size. You want to step through the fundamentals of foundational design and art, visual art in this case, as well as the geometry and the math. You need to go through them at the same time and you need to create program examples of that.

It sounds to me like the prerequisite for something like that would have the students to have had basic computer skills, some concepts of geometry and some concepts of design. All of that could be done before they enter the 3D printing class. The teachers for 3D printing, you would have a designer who works in the field. Visual artists and designers are always a component of science and math in that field. It’s shaping up to be that way. I’m picturing if we have a high school student who is in the manufacturing and engineering program and would like to design a car because there would be a miniature model, that would be a possibility. It would be the issue of colors maybe or somebody else who would like to design a lower arm as a prosthesis in robotics. Would those be possibilities?

To get to that advanced stage though, you have to have a 3D Printing 101 idea. What you need to do is step them through a semester or trimester depending on how they’re structured where you’ve taken them through the CAD design process. Maybe not ever printed until the end of the semester. That way, you’ve gone through the whole CAD program. Make sure that that happens because the design process of that can take a long time. If you’re setting up the expectation that you’re going to do a project in a week and then you’re going to print every week, it’s almost too much. It’s harder to do that.

You should think of it a little bit in traditional arts education like doing pottery things. What do students do in that class? They shape their clay pieces and paint their different glazes on it, but do they fire it in the kiln? No. The teacher takes that and put it in a kiln. That has to fire overnight. They don’t see it for a week or two. While the 3D printer could be running in every single class so people can see it build things and understand how it builds things, it gets important because it’s somewhat like nature where things grow rather than just all of a sudden it instantly appears. It does take time and the printing will have to happen outside of the class time or across all the class time.

From that perspective, you can do a lab appointment. You can go in there to schedule your time to start the print with some assistance. In the case of this, a lot of schools have been looking at putting the 3D printers into a lab situation. They keep a technician who runs the 3D printers, keeps them running, checks on them and does that. You could run it to many different classes at the same time. As you can make an appointment come in and program it in, it’ll tell you how long it’s going to run. They can come back in at any point and see how it’s running or check on it in two hours when it’s done. It’s always good for them to periodically be able to check on that.

That’s why it’d be good if it’s maybe an after school thing or something like that where they can come in and check on it because seeing it fail, which will happen, might be a good thing as well. It teaches you, “I should have designed that differently.” Learning what doesn’t work is as important.

That’s an important part of the process to understand by educators and when planning a course. The process is iterative. You don’t always get the results you expect the first time you print something, then you need to go back and change. There’s also the concept of successful failure, which is counterintuitive to a lot of things in public education.

It’s good to teach them that.

You’re touching what the Common Core Standards are trying to teach, which are problem-solving, critical thinking and going through the process in order to find the solution. Things are changing as the process is going along. As you discover that, you start in one direction and things happen as you build. You have to respect the direction that the product is taking.

That’s why it’s okay that you have a single color printer to begin with, because you’re beginning with a little more restriction is frustrating. It can cause quick failure and someone to give up. What we saw when we first started 3D printing was that we get this machine. We think, “We know a lot about CAD. We’ve been doing this for many years. This is going to be easy.” Everything that came out of the machine didn’t look at the design quality level that we expected of ourselves because there was a fundamental translation between what we imagined and how it came out of the machine. It took us about six months to dial that in before I felt like we had something good enough to show people.

There was a time when I was studying where there were people for techniques and other people were for creativity as if it was opposite. I’ve always felt like techniques should serve creativity and that is a perfect example.

That’s what we practice here. All of these are a method or a material to an end goal, but you have to start with that. You have to think about the what. That’s why we named our podcast WTFFF?! because you should start with the what. What do I want to make? What is my goal with this? What is my design style? Some people start with as an advanced designer. What is the concept I want to teach? Do I want to teach about fractals? Do I want to teach about line and form? What are those concepts that you want the kids to grasp from this? It is as important as what comes out of it. You have to have both. You need examples and you need the freedom to build.

 

One of the reasons I’m pushing for big ideas like a prosthesis or a car is because I see not only the students but teachers as well. When you give an opportunity for teachers to get training or to express their own creativity, it ends up being passed on to the students and the whole classroom becomes inspired. A few years ago, I learned the true meaning of education. It comes from the Latin educare, which means to draw out and not put in. I feel exactly that’s what we do when we truly educate. We allow people to express their abilities and creativity. I’ve seen it over and over when people have that opportunity, whether they’re students or teachers. You plant a seed and you expect a nice little flower. A bush one day came up with a big oak tree. It’s so much bigger than what you expected.

That’s why you need to do that 101 program where you teach them CAD because once you give them the CAD, you give them the building blocks.

They will exceed your expectations all the time and you may be able to support it.

Using the printer is an output. It’s finally printing it out. It’s to see how successful your idea was in the CAD. Did you achieve what you wanted? It’s a test and proof system. Don’t treat the printers as the important part. The CAD is the important part. Once the kids have that 101 down, a 3D Printing 101 or 3D CAD 101 is what we’re talking about, you can use it in history. You could use it in science and literature. It doesn’t matter what you use it for. That’s a tool now for them to create their book report. That might be a visual diorama. Back when we did history with Alex, you had to build the pyramids or you had to build a mission. That’s what we do here in California. We built the California mission. Instead of buying the little parts, putting them together and making them out of clay, they can 3D print them if they want. They have options and they have choices of things that they can do.

I could see having things like that in a physics class. We used to have this project in high school where you had to make an enclosure or a package for a raw egg. They would drop it out from the third storey window and it’s going to fall to the ground due to gravity and you need to protect that egg. Wouldn’t it be cool to create some portion of that if not all of it through 3D printing? There are many ways this can weave its way into different disciplines.

That’s why you can structure the 3D printers in an accessible lab situation in which any department, classroom or teacher can take it on. Have the ability to train those teachers in those classrooms as to what it’s going to offer them and what they will have learned in the CAD program. Those teachers don’t need to know the CAD if it’s not a part of what they need to teach, but they can understand what was taught.

How much does a basic 3D printer cost?

A basic one to start, there’s one that we’re going to be conducting a review on. We’ve seen it at a trade show that they give educational discounts for and the printer itself is about $600. It’s not that expensive. By reputation, it’s a good quality machine that is built for educational purposes. You need to think about the ideas. If there’s a lab, you want to have a printing farm. They’re usually on network and they can all run. You want to have a farm of at least a half a dozen, depending on how big the classrooms are going to be. You probably want to have one for every five kids. It’s what the estimate is. If you’ve got a classroom of 30 kids, you might want six of these smaller ones. You may want one larger one for those advanced projects.

You could grow into that. You could start with the entry-level for sure.

How much does the larger printer cost?

They can vary anywhere from $1,000. The ones that I would use for this purpose are $1,000 and maybe $3,000 at the highest. At this level of a one-color machine that is reliable and easy to set up and work with is important.

There are a lot of 3D printer companies that are going for good educational discounts. If you’re going to put them into a certain number of schools, there’s a volume discount for doing that. There’s a discount for education because it’s an advantage for the 3D printer company to have their printer be part of a young curriculum. Those kids are going to come out of that and say, “I want to buy that printer.” It translates into loyalty, into something they’re comfortable with.

They may be future employees as well. They’re testing the product.

At the state of 3D printing sales and things that are going on, there are a lot of good deals for that. We have to go out there and ask for them, talk to them and see who’s going to offer. The most important thing that we need to consider is making sure that you would get a service program. Some of these machines are not low maintenance in terms of replacement parts and they can be heavy use. Some of the companies are great and will replace everything all the time and they’ve got great service. You need to make sure you have a good service package on these machines.

That’s why careful selection of the right machine may be necessary.

Maybe even using a local reseller for your service programs. Buy a package and you have a local guy who’s there and ready if there’s some big problem like the machine needs to be completely replaced out. Those things happen. To be able to have that as a service part of the program is important too. The other big component though is making sure that the software side of things is taken care of for you and they’re not costly. A lot of these programs are free and online. They’re in the Cloud.

There might be a limitation. Some of the better software for getting started in this 101 class type level is online software only. The internet is probably a protected thing in public school systems for students.

It is. If a program is needed, then it will allow access but it’s on a specific site.

It’s a great way because it saves your work. The kids don’t have to just work in the classroom. They can go home or go to the library if they don’t have a computer at home and they can continue working on their project.

For the school, it’s easier not to have to maintain a bunch of individual software licenses on machines, but you have a license to use software on the website. Autodesk has some good newer software tools for learning CAD for that entry-level to medium level. It’s all online and free.

At the advanced level, when you’re going to get to doing prosthetics, cars and all of those things, they are going to have to go for a more advanced software package. They’re going to have to go in that and there are a lot of those companies.

AutoCAD has some great programs that are low cost for education as a student package and things like that. There are a lot of those that can happen at that advanced level and there are a lot of online courses. There’s training that comes straight from companies like AutoCAD or SolidWorks or wherever they’re being taught. Those kinds of things are available for advanced students. Once they’ve gotten through the 101 and they’re in love with 3D printing, it is addictive. It could happen to a lot of students, then there’s that opportunity to take it further. You need to take it further if you want to do advanced shapes, structures and forms. They’ll have to add that in, but they will be proactive. They’ll do it on their own. I know it because I’ve seen it happen many times.

It’s wonderful. I’m enjoying the combination of practical ideas and artistic applications.

You’re asking about the overall cost. It’s a total mistake to think that the materials are going to be the costly part of things. It’s not.

 

There are consumable materials. It’s primarily plastic that they would be printing with and there’s a cost. You have to have a spool of plastic. There are different sizes of spools that range from maybe $20 to $50 for a spool, but they last a long time. You would need one per machine. The amount of printing that could be done each semester, if they would used 1 to 2 spools per classroom, would shock me.

How much filament does the tie take? It’s a small amount considering.

It takes 1/10 of a pound. It’s not that much.

That’s a complex nineteen-hour print and most of these kids are going to do a couple of hour print.

Maybe it’s 1/5 of a pound if I’m estimating that wrong, but it’s not much. It depends on how large things are. Initially, things should be geared towards smaller objects because they’ll print faster and then they have that sense of satisfaction and seeing the results sooner.

It’s an initial setup cost because you want to have a range of colors that you have available and you’ll want to have a lot more white and gray for running quick tests. The cheaper filaments are white, black and gray usually because you can find a lot of supplies of those. You can run tests on those so it’s not critical to do it in your final color. Stock it so you’ve got maybe half a dozen colors and a dozen rolls. That’s about it. They’re pennies per design.

You’ve provided a wonderful perspective. I see the days with even more possibilities than I originally thought they were.

I hope that you can get the California school systems more into it because it’s necessary. Other countries are ahead of the United States in getting it integrated into education. That’s very important for the US.

It’s so critical for the future. This is the controversy every time we talk about education in social media or anywhere else or when we’re talking about on our show. The buzz about it, the education topic is so popular and controversial at the same time. The real reason is that there’s a little bit of concern that other countries are going to be ahead of us in the number of people with skills to be able to handle a world in which 3D models are the major source of commerce.

The design itself and the skills you have to be able to create those designs, whether it’s on a technical side, we don’t always make every prototype or anything like that. We don’t always do that ourselves. We have people who are technicians who do that, but to have that skilled labor at our access is extremely important and in a short supply in some cases. Being able to be a skilled labor level with making design decisions that are important for the US market is a critical factor in the future of where things are going to go in the next few years.

As traditional manufacturing continues to be difficult to do in a country like the United States with labor rates and all of the things that go along with that, 3D printing as it becomes stronger, and it will be stronger, will become more mainstream. It’s going to be in great demand for people to create the content. What’s going to be printed? As companies look to differentiate themselves from one another, it’s going to be like do they have the same thing to print as the competitors or are those unique? Who’s going to create that unique thing? It’s a big opportunity for designers. Designers and CAD technicians are going to be in much higher demand in the future.

It already is in a way a design-based economy in the business world. I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs and we’ve had quite a few young entrepreneurs who’ve come to us asking for our assistance on the 3D printing side. They’ve maybe even won an award already in the school system because there are a lot of entrepreneur and innovation contests going on in lots of the schools. If they’ve won an award, they need to take it to the next stage of prototyping it and doing all of this. They’re like, “I’d have to learn all of these things about 3D printing to be able to do it. I don’t have enough time because I’ve got to be done with my projects so that I can apply to school.”

That’s what they’re at. They’ve contacted us and we’ve said, “This is doable. There are people out there that we can subcontract out. There are people who will donate their time to you because you’re a student and they want to help you.” I was like, “We can get through this. If you need machine time, come over here and we’ll run the machine for you.” Those things are not a big deal. We did an episode about the idea that every business, entrepreneur and young startup needs to be thinking about 3D printing as a consideration in their process.

If they don’t have a basis of understanding of what it takes, then they can’t consider it. That’s problematic. The part that a lot of them aren’t thinking of that we think of all the time is 3D printing can also give you a market edge when you’re a young startup and you need to compete against the big guys. You can print a personalized, customized, and specialized product and they can’t do that because they’ve already spent tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars on tooling and their design is stuck. It gives them innovation flexibility and differentiation. Having that 101 basis is key to being able to tap into it as another business tool for success.

I can’t wait to start working on this and start bringing that to the school.

—

As a parent, it’s eye-opening to understand and it blew a couple of misconceptions about the Common Core, which is such a controversial topic. We have lots of topics and conversations about that on Facebook all the time.

I was interested to understand that one of the things Common Core is trying to do is support cross-disciplinary educators.

We believe in that completely. We chose to put our daughter in Orange County School of the Arts because we wanted her to have a more Renaissance approach to education in general. It’s been such a gap and our youngest is about to enter first grade. We’re about to be immersed in the Common Core in a way that we weren’t before with Alex. That’s important to understand what is driving and how arts education, 3D printing, and all of those things can expand upon it. Maybe there’s a way for teachers, educators, and program developers in various school districts to learn from what’s going on with Hélène and other people like her in trying to figure out what that curriculum and program should look like. If you are out there and you’ve managed to get it in your school district or if you are a teacher who’s managed to implement it in your classroom, contact us.

We’d like to hear details about how that happened.

We’d love to interview you on the show. We’d love to talk further about it. We’d love to help spread the word of what you did that helped implement this, what you used and what’s not working for you. We can provide you new resources, maybe connections to 3D printing companies and sales companies who can help you with support if that’s your problem and who knows what your issues might be.

It can be people like John Bokla who are dealing with how best to educate people in 3D printing.

Contact us at @HazzDesign or HazzDesign.com. It depends on whether you want to go the social media route or on our website. Contact us and let us know what you’re doing because we’d love to profile that. Everyone can learn from the successes and also the failures of what’s going on.

Successful failures are undervalued in America.

From across the country, this is our plea. Let us know.

As more things develop here in California with the people that we know and we’re talking to, we’ll share their developments with you as well on the show.

It’ll definitely be ongoing. Either we’ll post it on our blog or we’ll do a whole new episode on it every time. Thanks again for reading. I hope you guys enjoyed this education slant on 3D printing.

Important Links:

• Hélène Trudeau LinkedIn
• Brian Federal – past episode
• John Bokla – past episode
• Common Core
• A Whole New Mind
• Tinkercad
• Autodesk
• SolidWorks
• @HazzDesign – Facebook
• HazzDesign.com

• Here’s How »

• 3DStartpoint.com
• 3D Startpoint Facebook
• 3D Startpoint LinkedIn
• Hazz Design Twitter
• 3D Startpoint YouTube