Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Despite the high-level rhetoric about the critical role of design and engi-
neering education, neither the United States nor the United Kingdom have
engineering or design skills in their standard curricula. While there is plenty
of curriculum dedicated to math and science, there is relatively little attention
given to engineering, which focuses on synthesis and design. Therefore, public
schools have a hard time justifying funding for the necessary technologies in
their budgets. Inside the classroom, teachers must defend their choice to use
3D printing and 3D modeling software in their lesson plans.
In the United States, the Department of Defense and DARPA are funding
programs to provide specialized high school and middle school engineering
training sites with 3D printers. However, valuable as they are, these pilot
programs leave most public schools out in the cold. Public school teachers
who aren't funded by a government agency or company must scrape together
the resources to procure a 3D printer for their classrooms and get permission
to adapt their teaching.
In the United Kingdom the situation is similar. Dave White's 3D printing
curriculum is not funded by an external agency, nor does his school have
the technology budget to cover it. “Most of the resources I've gathered for my
classroom have been gained by begging and borrowing—but of course not
from stealing!” he joked. A small company near the Clevedon School called Bits
From Bytes (recently acquired by 3D Systems) generously donated a RapMan,
a consumer-level 3D printer, to the school.
Dave plans to forge onwards, however. “I spend my own time outside of the
classroom working on ways to teach with these new technologies because it's
what I believe in,” he said. “Schools can't teach kids how to be carpenters and
plumbers any more. We have to teach them skills that they can use in their
future workplaces.”
Not a national crisis . . . but learning should
be enjoyable
Every few decades in the United States, in response to a perceived threat
to national security, education experts decree a crisis of public education.
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education has
once again become a battle cry. In the 1950s, there was public concern that
