3D printing and Open Educational Resources

Last week, I chose to focus on our pod meeting, our pair meeting and our 1:1. I submitted a grant funding proposal that I plan to share in my final project and with other organizations. So instead of writing a blog post last week, I dove in to looking at funding options, locating 3D printing companies and options, as well as gathered some important quotes to help us refine our purpose, problem and question for our final project. Here is a nicely laid out MakerBot Grant Guide, that I found helpful. We have now created the outline for our paper and started to write up our stories. Along with continuing our research and finding the theoretical frameworks that we will focus on. So far we are looking at constructivism/socio-constructivism, experiential learning, self-determination theory and TPACK. 3D printing provides choice, differentiation and hands-on learning experiences and we look forward to discovering more.

This weeks blog post I wanted to focus on Open Education Resources. It was empowering to discuss the possibilities of Creative Commons licences. Although, I had some background in CC ressources for post secondary students through the workshops at the Digital Scholarships Commons, which have all lesson plans CC licensed – here is an example of the 3D Print and Design workshop. I never really found good resources that are available with this same license for teachers. As teachers, this is interesting to reflect on. For me teaching is all about collaborating and finding what best meets students needs. However when it comes to finding resources sometimes that means reinventing the wheel even if it exists somewhere as often the resources isn’t accessible or freely available. The BCTF has started to address this issue and created a shared bank of resources, similarly in the past SharedEd BC tried to do the same. It is my belief that Open Educational Resources could change education, if teachers knew about them and contributed to the growth. With many CC licences you are able to modify resources to meet the needs of your class and address growth, instead of starting from scratch. This saves time and money. Although some people and educators, may be afraid to share their personally created resources, they shouldn’t be, no resource is perfect and more brains together can benefit from it but also add to it to make it work.

Furthermore, to tie this to Krystal and I final project, we plan to make an Open Education Resource to address this need in terms of 3D printing. Many articles, addressed the concern of not having enough resources and support. However with this project there will be a community of support and lessons available.

Cheng et al (2023), for instances stated that “some challenges, including the lack of 3D printers, technical support, ability to print 3D objects, time to learn how to print 3D objects, and the difficulty in connecting 3D printing to curriculum standards and creating lessons.” (p.196).

Ultimately Open Ed Resources could benefit not only teachers but also parents, students and the broader community to seek learning and meet their needs on their own time and be able to reach out and connect with others to help as needed.