1. Student-Centered Learning Approaches

Creating 3d-Models with the lasercutter

Creating my diorama

This week, I made a haloween diorama to match the holiday. The diorama can be equipped with different figures. These are stored in a box, in the lid of which the individual figures can be placed on 5 rails.

I made the box with “boxes.py”. The further processing was done with the original x-Tool-software. Various challenges arose during production:

1. measuring the width of the rail so that the figures can be inserted firmly but not too tightly.

2. attaching rectangular adapters to the underside of the figures to prevent them from tipping over.

3. arrange the individual parts so that they fit on the 300x200mm wooden boards I used.

Reflecting questions

1. How your press-fit can be utilized in education? How other teachers could use it?

• From a technical perspective, this project allows students to learn about dimensional tolerances and how dimensions vary with the thickness of the material used.

• The diorama can be used as decoration for the classroom. Different elements for other holidays such as Christmas or Easter are possible.

• The diorama can also be used as a display for pupils’ names or for feedback. For example, the pupils could put a question mark there if they need help, the pupil’s name could be displayed, etc.

• You could also use corresponding figures to represent numbers and calculations, arrange sentence elements or present certain facts in the form of a diorama.

2. What has been your experience using Project Based Learning / Problem based learning in the past? What were the main challenges? How DF can support Project Based Learning / Problem Based learning?

First of all, a brief preliminary remark on the two terms, because there are differences between German and English: Project Based Learning is defined in German as follows: Students are given or assign themselves a task that they work on as a team work on as a team: a technical problem for which they develop a solution themselves and which they work on with advice, but largely on their own responsibility. That’s why it was initially irritating for me that the same term is obviously to be understood somewhat differently in English. In German, when we talk about project-oriented learning, we would rather speak of product-oriented learning or action-oriented learning. And problem-oriented learning in German would be something that is very similar to the English term project-oriented learning.

Now I come back to the original question:

• As both forms of learning are recommended in recent pedagogy, I have been using them in my lessons for some time now. In regular subject lessons and in classes with up to 30 pupils, this is not easy to implement, so it is better to use both forms of learning in smaller groups. This is possible at our school when we do so-called project weeks. The pupils can then work a little more openly and are not as tied to curricula as in subject lessons. It requires more effort to work in this way because it makes lessons less predictable and the teacher can respond very flexibly to students’ questions and ideas.

• Another problem is the attitude of the pupils: As they are not used to working in this way, they find it difficult to deal with open-ended problems and largely free options for working on them. This has to be introduced in small steps and the pupils first have to learn to get used to it. But once it is established, the pupils are usually more motivated than in regular lessons.

• Teachers’ expectations are another problem area: when new forms of learning are used, students are often expected to achieve the subject-related learning objectives faster or better. However, this is not actually the intention. On the contrary: as the pupils acquire additional skills such as independence, cooperation skills and self-efficacy in such forms of learning, it is actually more likely that the subject-related learning gains could be somewhat lower.

Digital fabrication is in itself already product- and problem-oriented. It is not at all obvious to use traditional teaching methods in digital fabrication. Conventional teaching would hardly work with it, or if one were to proceed in this way, it would ultimately just be classic technology teaching with digital machines. With traditional methods, students would lose a large part of their motivation and would not achieve many of the skills that digital fabrication makes possible.

3. When organizing DF activities with kids, What are the aspects that you think should be prepared beforehand? What aspects can be improvised?

• In any case, the technical requirements must be checked in advance and everything must function as required. One of the biggest problems is when disruptions suddenly occur during lessons because devices cannot be controlled via the WLAN or if the devices are set up incorrectly. Unfortunately, such problems cannot be completely avoided, so the teacher should be able to solve simple problems himself, e.g. if the nozzle of the 3d printer is clogged or if the blade of the cutter has to be replaced. Teachers who do not know how to do this and then have to read up on how to solve the problem in class waste teaching time and put themselves under enormous unnecessary stress.

• Students need to be able to access digital aids such as explanatory videos, which they can watch at their own pace and which take the pressure off the teacher during lessons. The better these aspects are organized in advance, the more the teacher can concentrate on advising the students individually. Then the focus can be on implementing the students’ ideas, for which preparation is of course hardly possible. The teacher should of course be very familiar with all the machines and their possibilities so that the advice given to the students is really effective. In this way, it can be avoided that the students want to implement ideas that are completely unrealistic because they cannot be implemented well in the given time or with the available technology.

• It should be clear to everyone involved what processes are in place at FabLAb. Mutual expectations should be clarified and the students must know all the necessary routines. For example, it must be clear in which cupboards which tools are to be found or which tools may be used by the students at all. Pupils need to know which tasks they are allowed to carry out independently without further permission and for which tasks they need to ask for permission in advance or require prior supervision.