Ultimaker Offers 8 Free STEAM Lessons for 3D Printing

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 04/23/2018

Printer maker Ultimaker has introduced a set of eight free lessons for incorporating 3D printing into the classroom. "Ultimaker Core Lessons: STEAM Set" includes projects for creating "coin traps," pill boxes, penny whistles, flashlights, accessories for a potato head, sphericons, components for doing block printing and tessellation boxes.

The lessons are intended to encourage students ages 10 and older to become more responsible for their learning outcomes by coming up with their own designs for each project, to gain design-thinking techniques, learn rapid prototyping and testing, and develop their communication and collaboration skills.

"As teachers, we want learning environments and activities that engage and challenge our students. We want to tap into their curiosity, inspire them to see connections between ideas and information and have them use their understanding to creatively problem solve with independence," stated an overview of the lessons. "Our objective is to instill a love of learning, so that they can think critically, communicate effectively, persevere, be intrinsically motivated, be responsible for their own learning outcomes, and find joy in the process."

Each lesson includes a brief overview, and a zip file containing walkthroughs for myriad design programs, student help sheets and example files, as well as an estimated class time required and the amount of filament the project will use.

The lessons have been published under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license. This is just the latest education offering by the company, which maintains a "Pioneer Program" website to draw in teachers and instructors to share their own lessons and best practices with other educators