Ep. 38 | 3D Printing for Your Classroom

Before we get into unpacking the tech, we'd like to have a little discussion and just set this whole thing up.

And I feel like we have the right expert in here for this.

But what value does 3D printing and robotics provide for students? Like, why should we waste our time and money teaching this in school?

That's a really great question.

And I mean, honestly, the best way to answer that is to look back.

If you think about robotics as a field and how it's evolved for maybe over 30 years since the development of the first few automation in factories, it has always been someone extremely talented, designed something, and they go through iteration after iteration in their head or on a piece of paper before then spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars manufacturing it, whether that be making it out of plastic or sculpting it or casting it in metal.

That was always the process.

It was long and arduous.

But now with 3D printing and hobbyist robotics and the access to the components that we have today, I mean, I could go on Amazon and buy a motor for a robot, and it'll show up tomorrow.

the accessibility is so much greater than it ever has been.

And so when we integrate these kind of things into classrooms, we're basically enabling that process that 30 years ago engineers would do, where you're collaborating with your peers, you're solving a complex problem to get an end product, but you're doing it instead of six months, six weeks maybe, or even less.

You're getting that exact same engineering lifecycle, but with a lower timeline and with a lower cost.

I love it.

Just a quick example that I was watching a documentary

on YouTube that was a couple years old.

It was like a BBC something, I

think.

And they were examining this old house, and the archaeologists were – architects were – talking about this cool scanning technology and then this 3d printing.

And I was like, that is really cool.

But with some software and my iPad and a 3d printer, I now can do that at my house.

And at the time of the documentary, which wasn't that long ago, that was revolutionary.

And it took a big segment of, of the episode, you know, the documentary, I thought that was like, like, cool.

And that totally ties right into a lot of topics in education and tech right now, where it's kind of like things are changing very fast.

So we should build the infrastructure in our school systems to be rapidly changing and rapidly educating these students on the newest and the most important things, especially like AI, where in a year it'll be so much different.

But if we could teach the students of today the most recent and cutting edge stuff, then they'll be the best prepared.

Before we get into unpacking the tech, we'd like to have a little discussion and just set this whole thing up.

And I feel like we have the right expert in here for this.

But what value does 3D printing and robotics provide for students? Like, why should we waste our time and money teaching this in school?

That's a really great question.

And I mean, honestly, the best way to answer that is to look back.

If you think about robotics as a field and how it's evolved for maybe over 30 years since the development of the first few automation in factories, it has always been someone extremely talented, designed something, and they go through iteration after iteration in their head or on a piece of paper before then spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars manufacturing it, whether that be making it out of plastic or sculpting it or casting it in metal.

That was always the process.

It was long and arduous.

But now with 3D printing and hobbyist robotics and the access to the components that we have today, I mean, I could go on Amazon and buy a motor for a robot, and it'll show up tomorrow.

the accessibility is so much greater than it ever has been.

And so when we integrate these kind of things into classrooms, we're basically enabling that process that 30 years ago engineers would do, where you're collaborating with your peers, you're solving a complex problem to get an end product, but you're doing it instead of six months, six weeks maybe, or even less.

You're getting that exact same engineering lifecycle, but with a lower timeline and with a lower cost.

I love it.

Just a quick example that I was watching a documentary

on YouTube that was a couple years old.

It was like a BBC something, I

think.

And they were examining this old house, and the archaeologists were – architects were – talking about this cool scanning technology and then this 3d printing.

And I was like, that is really cool.

But with some software and my iPad and a 3d printer, I now can do that at my house.

And at the time of the documentary, which wasn't that long ago, that was revolutionary.

And it took a big segment of, of the episode, you know, the documentary, I thought that was like, like, cool.

And that totally ties right into a lot of topics in education and tech right now, where it's kind of like things are changing very fast.

So we should build the infrastructure in our school systems to be rapidly changing and rapidly educating these students on the newest and the most important things, especially like AI, where in a year it'll be so much different.

But if we could teach the students of today the most recent and cutting edge stuff, then they'll be the best prepared.