MakerBot wants to congratulate the NYU Poly Team Atlas 2012 on their success at NASA’s Third Annual Lunabotics Mining Competition!

These MakerBotters are an awesome group of students using their Thing-O-Matic to make all kinds of things, related and unrelated to the goal of building a lunar mining robot. Here’s the exact language from the competition page:

The challenge is for students to design and build an excavator, called a Lunabot, that can mine and deposit a minimum of 10 kilograms of lunar simulant within 10 minutes.

Team Atlas took home the Judges Innovation Award and Third Place in the Team Spirit Award category. Throughout the competition, they were making things for other teams, like actual robot parts, but also souvenirs like Dr. Who Tardises¹ and Space Shuttle models. How generous!

Here’s the team’s Lunabot, “Atlas02″ in action.

Congratulations Jack Poon, Stanislav Rosylakov, Yusif Nurizade, Jessica Aleksandrowicz, Nick Cavaliere, Salvatore DiAngelus, Matthew Izberskiy, Ryan Caeti, and advisors!

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1. this is the plural form we have settled on [↩]

I know I’m not through my backlog of WYMB pictures, but just look at the one we got a minute ago via twitter!

These awesome, eager, MakerBotting 4th and 5th graders come to your screen from Boynton Beach, Florida’s Poinciana Elementary Magnet school for STEM. I’m going to have to dig deeply into teacher Kris Swanson’s blog now. I want to know all about what they are making, how they are designing, and how you get a dozen 10-year-olds to look that happy and excited for a picture.

A sincere happy Teacher Appreciation Week to all of you teachers.

“It’s important to take the time to color inside the lines.”

“12 x 12 = 144″

“The Treaties of Westphalia heralded the era of the nation state in Europe.”

“An adverb describes a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.”

“Do your best; nobody can ask for more than that.”

“The First Law of Thermodynamics is you do not talk about Thermodynamics.”

Think about it: there was a specific point in time when you learned each of these things. (I double checked all but the last one, but it sounds right.) We learned these things, and we did it through the persistence and patience of great teachers, at home or in the classroom.

Whether your formal education is ongoing — hey, young readers! — or ended 50 years ago, there is never a bad time to reflect on the people who chose teaching for their career. It is a demanding and often thankless job, and we at MakerBot want teachers to know they are always on our minds.

If you are a MakerBot owner, you have the chance to give the teachers in your life a special gift. It could be a customized nameplate, a desk organizer, or the old standby, an apple.

I made an apple yesterday on my Replicator and brought it around to some of the people here at MakerBot. These are people in our company who come from lots of different backgrounds, and I was personally curious to know which teachers inspired them and got them here. Here are their answers.

Adam, Co-Founder and CTO
Is there one teacher you remember fondly?
Mrs. Wolff, physics teacher.

What was one thing that person taught you that stuck?
That there’s no luminiferous ether.

What would you say to that teacher if you had a chance?
Why the hell wasn’t that part of the basic curriculum?

Read the rest of this entry »

Jean Adams' Honors Geometry class at Castilleja School in Palo Alto

A few months ago Jean Adams, a teacher from Castilleja School in Palo Alto, wrote to me about the OpenSCAD tutorials on our blog so she could use them in her classroom. ¹  Obviously, this got me interested, so I asked her to share more about her class:

I teach Honors Geometry at Castilleja, an independent girls’ school for grades 6-12 in the heart of Silicon Valley.  This year our school opened an “Idea Lab” in connection with Stanford’s Fab Lab and trained a group of teachers on several digital fabrication machines.  Among those machines was a cute, wooden MakerBot Thing-o-Matic.  I was immediately drawn to the homebrew feel of the community around MakerBot and frankly the machine reminded me of the Apple I.  A parent volunteer, Diego Fonstad, showed me the openSCAD program and I saw how wonderfully this software could help teach several concepts in my Geometry class.  I began to play with OpenSCAD by following MakerBlock’s tutorials on the MakerBot blog.  Eventually I adapted his tutorials for my classroom and my student’s learned OpenSCAD during two 50-minute class sessions.  They were then given time  outside of class to work on a final project which was printed on our school’s Thing-o-Matic.

The list of concepts that this project helped teach or reinforce is actually quite extensive.  During the year long course my students learn about union and intersection of geometrical objects, vectors, rigid transformations such as translation, rotation, dilation (scale in OpenSCAD), and the z-axis.  All of these ideas came together in the design of their OpenSCAD object.  Futhermore I teach a small amount of programming in the python language and their skills in that language transferred over directly into OpenSCAD.

Beyond any specific content learned through this project, I intended my students to practice using spatial reasoning.  A 2010 research report by AAUW entiled “Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics” presents research that shows women can dramatically improve spatial reasoning skills in a short amount of time in order to close the gap with men.  ”If girls grow up in an environment with opportunities  to develop their spatial skills, they are more likely to consider a future in a science or engineering field.”  I found that students struggled with thinking and rotating in 3 dimensions, but by the end of the project had developed a robust ability to rotate their OpenSCAD objects in their mind.

A nice (and accidental) side effect was the chance for students to express themselves creatively in math class.  Diego Fonstad wrote, “The detail and breadth of their output exceeded what was required of them to complete the project. This underscores their latent creativity and desire to build and also demonstrates how this exercise tapped their intrinsic motivation and truly engaged the students.”

Jean’s class have shared their designs on Thingiverse, including the cutest and pinkest R2D2 I’ve ever seen.

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1. Seriously – what kind of class is teaching OpenSCAD?!  Are there any open seats left?! [↩]

A new week begins and I have a few items to put on your calendar. These concern Saskatonians, New Yorkers, Washington, DC, and Connecticuters.

First things first: if you’re in the New York City area and you’re interested in some basic MakerBotting education for free, reserve a spot now at our class at Tekserve on Thursday. You can see the invitation and RSVP here.

What — 90 minute class with MakerBot Education guru Liz Arum
When – Thursday, April 26; 6:30-8:00 p.m.
Where — Tekserve in New York City; 119 West 23rd Street. New York, NY 10011

If you are anywhere near the nation’s capital this weekend, there are a couple chances to Kinect (see what I did there?) with our MakerBot road crew, Matt, Keith, and Nick. The guys will be hanging out on Saturday and Sunday for the USA Science and Engineering Festival, which bills itself as “the most compelling, exciting, educational and entertaining science festival in the United States.”

This is a jam-packed festival that basically anyone could enjoy. For example, page 6 of the list of stage shows includes an hour session by Bill Nye. THE SCIENCE GUY! If Bill Nye’s on page 6, you know the rest of the lineup has to be pretty exciting. There’s an Electronic Fashion Show, a talk from actress and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik, a panel discussion with CIA scientists, a Harry Potter magic demonstration, and dozens and dozens of other shows, not to mention exhibits like ours where kids and families can interact with fun science of all kinds.

The MakerBot booth will have our latest 3D printer, The Replicator, and we will be scanning and printing visitors with the Xbox Kinect and ReconstructMe, and more! Come see us!

What – MakerBot booth at a giant, awesome science fair in Washington, DC
When – April 28, 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.; April 29, 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
Where – Walter E. Washington Convention Center; 801 Mount Vernon Place, NW. Washington, DC 20001

While the crew is down in D.C., they plan to party Saturday night close to the Convention Center at The Passenger. We have rented a room from 6:00-8:00 p.m., and will be offering food and drinks on us, first-come-first-served, until we run out!

What – A chance for MakerBot Operators to come together and hang out with Keith, Matt, and Nick
When – April 28, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Where – The Passenger; 1021 7th St NW, Washington, DC 20001

For any readers near Saskatoon, Canada — often considered the Edmonton of Saskatchewan — come see MakerBot at The Man Show 2012. This is a lifestyle trade show geared subtly toward men. Okay, frankly, this looks awesome. It’s a giant exhibition of gadgets and tools. It will be a great chance to check out The Replicator in the midst of a bunch of other really cool things. Tickets are $10.

What – Chance to see The Replicator and speak with an expert on our 3D printers
When – April 26-27, 4:00-10:00 p.m.; April 28, 1:00-9:00 p.m.
Where – Credit Union Centre; 3515 Thatcher Avenue. Saskatoon, SK S7R 1C4, Canada

A second group of MakerBot staff is also thrilled to attend the Mini Maker Faire in Westport, Connecticut. We’ll be rolling from 10:00 a.m until things wind down at 4:00 p.m. Come visit us (including me!) and say hello to our 3D printers.

What — Mini Maker Faire featuring MakerBot and many other exhibitors
When – April 28, 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
Where — Westport Library; 20 Jesup Road, Westport, CT 06880

NY Daily News has a great profile today about an Iraqi War veteran, Purple Heart recipient, and New York City College of Technology Class of 2012 Valedictorian.

Let’s add one more to the list: MakerBot aficionado.

Richard Fisher will graduate on June 4th with the honor mentioned above, but his path to that degree wasn’t so direct. As The Daily News piece points out, Richard was a “terrible student in high school who got serious about academics after his brush with death during military service in the [Iraq] War.” He never told me about that last part; only that he had served four-and-a-half years on active duty in the US Navy, and two-and-a-half in the Reserves. He has a two-week active duty stint on schedule before graduation.

Richard’s story jumped out at me not just because he is a cool example of a MakerBot operator — more on that in a second. What’s awesome here is how an uninspired high schooler turned his non-academic predilection for Making into an academic career of inspiring others.

During the Fall of 2011 and into the Spring of this year, Richard was a student teacher at I.S. 318, where his primary focus was a 6th Grade shop class. This was Richard’s first exposure to MakerBot, and 3D printing in general. The shop classroom had two MakerBot Thing-O-Matics, which Richard and his cooperating teacher Russ Holstein used as the centerpiece of a sustainability project. Richard told his students to develop a sustainable building, model it, and fill it with models of sustainable furniture.

This was really no small feat. Many “of the concepts associated with design and modeling are a bit abstract which presents a challenge when teaching children that young (11 and 12 years old),” Richard said. But the challenge didn’t deter the kids, it excited them. “Maybe it is their young age, but the [MakerBot Thing-O-Matic] was unanimously voted ‘AWESOME.’ Whenever they saw the light turn on in the printer or heard it start buzzing, everyone wanted to know what was being printed. What is it? How does it work? How long does it take?”

I asked Richard whether the boys or the girls took to the technology better, and he said there was really no difference.  And once they got going, the kids “dove right in. We really pushed them beyond what a 12 year old would normally be expected to do. I think that their ability to rise to the occasion was what I found most impressive. That taught me an important lesson: If you give [kids] the tools they need and push them to do more, with the right motivation, they will deliver.”

There’s a nice end to this story. Along the way, Richard started submitting his own furniture designs to a contest at 3DTin.com. Once the kids took notice of what he was posting, they voted for his designs, and Richard came out the winner. We blogged about this at the time without knowing any of Richard’s back story, and were excited then to award him a MakerBot Replicator for his first place finish in the contest. Now we’re even more excited: the guy who has already put his life on the line in the military now plans to donate his Replicator to whichever school he ends up at for his first permanent teaching job.

Why is the Replicator a good fit for the classroom? Because they’re portable and inexpensive; perfect for the classroom, he says. But there’s more to it. As the brother of a technology teacher and a budding one himself, Richard told me there is “so much more” to teaching technology than just computers. “It drives me crazy to hear the words ‘technology’ and ‘computers’ used interchangeably.”

We’re thrilled Richard’s future students will get a chance to engage with concepts of open source hardware, rapid prototyping, and personal fabrication. We couldn’t hope for a better ambassador!

File under unexpected-but-awesome! The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research hosted a talk on the glories of additive personal manufacturing last week, and who showed up to bring home the message? That’s right, our friend the Thing-O-Matic!

Christopher Williams, assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering and DREAMS Lab Director at Virginia Tech (an IALR partner), told the crowd,

There are no more constraints…There are no more rules about what can and can’t be made.

Preach on, Dr. Williams! We’re thrilled MakerBot was part of your evening.