10 Ways PrintLab Helps Teachers with 3D Printing

13th August 2024 • News

First of all, if you don’t know much about us just yet: PrintLab is an online library of 3D printing mini courses, projects and design challenges. Our mission is to go far beyond teaching people how to become operators of 3D CAD software and 3D printers. We aim to equip them with the skills to become impactful designers that create solutions to real-world problems – whether this be in assistive technology, sustainable product design, or many other areas that benefit from the customisation offered by 3D printing.

One of our core passions is the growth of 3D printing in education, which is why we created a series features that make it easy to integrate 3D printing into the curriculum. These include standards-aligned lesson plans, portfolio templates, assessment rubrics and a share link feature that gives students one-click access to selected resources. At the end of this post, we’ll provide you with a free trial to PrintLab so you can check out the content in more detail. For now, let’s jump in to 10 ways PrintLab can help teachers with 3D printing this year!

1. Teacher Training – PrintLab resources aren’t just for students. Before you begin teaching, you can go through our ‘fundamentals pathway’ to learn new skills in a series of 3D CAD and 3D printing mini courses. Not only will this build your creative confidence, but you’ll become familiar with the exact content your students will go through, allowing you to provide them with accurate support and advice.

2. Save Time (+ Stress) – We understand how precious time is, which is why we designed PrintLab so that teachers don’t have to spend any time at all creating resources. Each project comes with absolutely everything you need, including informative videos, 3D CAD tutorials, activity instructions, worksheets and much more.

3. Become a Facilitator – Rather than spending every class presenting information to students, our online learning platform guides students through a whole range of offline and online activities – whether this be brainstorming and sketching, or online CAD tutorials using Autodesk’s Tinkercad and Fusion software (both free for education). This means that for much of the time, you can focus on facilitating students, as they learn, discover and innovate with creative freedom.

4. Standards-Aligned Curriculum – When developing PrintLab resources, we create our content to cater to the requirements of curriculum standards around the world. These include NGSS, ISTE, UK National Curriculum for Design and Technology, New Zealand Curriculum and Australian Curriculum for Design and Technologies (v9). Additionally, as students move through a project, they document their work in a pre-made template portfolio, which can be assessed using the included project rubric.

5. Progression – The Printlab library is made up of 3 types of resources that students can progress through to go from beginner to expert, and you have complete control over the individual resources that are undertaken throughout this progression. We recommend they begin by building 3D CAD and 3D printing skills in mini courses before progressing on to projects, where they are guided through the full design process to create specific types of products. Using everything they’ve learned, they’ll then be ready to take on challenges, which are live briefs where they design creative solutions for real organisations and people.

6. Concise Learning – It would be very nice for students to be able to take 3D printing or 3D CAD courses that go on for weeks, but in reality, these long courses simply don’t fit in to regular school schedules. Over time, we’ve refined our delivery to be as concise as possible but with all the key information included. This is why we opt for mini courses that actually fit into curriculum time.

7. Flexibility – Although PrintLab resources are ready-to-teach out of the box, this does not mean students always do the same activities. We are strong advocates of creative freedom, especially when it comes to how students plan and implement design strategies to address a brief or challenge. When students feel comfortable enough, they can veer off from the design activities mentioned in a project, and explore alternative activities from our comprehensive design method toolkit.

8. Real-World Impact – Our focus is not just on gifting students new knowledge and skills, but on providing authentic and impactful experiences. Time and time again we have seen just how talented students are, which is why our curriculum encourages and guides students in making real 3D printed products for real people and organisations. This might be assistive devices for local care homes, or homeware products that can be sold in real stores.

9. Bridging Industry and Education – What better way to prepare students for future careers than to deliver content created by those with industry experience. Here at PrintLab, we are a team of creatives with degrees and multiple years of experience in architecture and industrial design. We combine this experience with on-going advice from our global pioneer teacher network to ensure our materials excel in the classroom.

10. Fresh Content – PrintLab is an ever-growing platform with new resources added all year round. Our approach is to take inspiration from current innovations in industry and bring them into our learning platform, so students are addressing modern and relevant challenges.

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We hope you enjoyed learning more about PrintLab and we welcome you to try out our curriculum using the free trial link below. And if you have any questions at all, feel free to reach out at hello@weareprintlab.com. Wishing everyone the best for the back to school season!