Introduction

1. Introduction

Last updated: 11/10/2014

Last year I was part of the project 3Ducation, a project about 3D-printing in schools for educational purposes. This project became a very broad study of the possibilities of 3D-printing and the possible educational applications this could have. However there was not really one concrete end product that could be implemented by schools. There are various possible applications for 3D-printing in education, but the big problem is that the technique is very new and still has some problems. However the future seems bright for 3D-printing and when the technique moves forward it will become increasingly easy to use it in schools.

Since I really got got by the “3D-printing virus” I started to explore the field of 3D-printing more and more. I always kept this project in mind, as well as my fascination with the technique itself. It is still an upcoming technique and it is still a very unfinished technique, looking for useful purposes, besides from design and fun purposes. 3D-printing has something magical, the idea of being able to just print something and actually being able to hold it after watching your printer build it, layer per layer. It triggers the imagination of many people, yet there are some sceptics. They are still not convinced that 3D-printing will be the future and they are doubting about that it will ever mean something to the world. It might be hard to see the value of it now because it is still only the beginning of the technique, but there is already a community of people that hope that 3D-printing will make a change. Giving more people the ability to make whatever they can think of, print it and use it, or maybe even sell it. Right now we are still depending on big manufacturers that make mass products. With 3D-printing it is easier to make a prototype, test it, see whether there is a market and maybe scale up your production, without loosing the ability to offer customized products. Some people think that 3D-printing will change the society in a way that there will be more local print hubs instead of big manufacturers, which will change the structure of the society and creating different future workspaces. The 3D-print community is also very open source (Ultimaker has open source instructions to build your own Ultimaker printer, without having to buy anything from Ultimaker) which is also a change that allow more people to use and improve the ideas of other people. Which will lead to some interesting discussions about things like the rights of artists. Doing things yourself, or, better said, together will be the future and 3D-printing is one of the clearest and most exciting techniques that will enable this.

Since 3D-printing offers you almost unlimited possibilities it is hard to come up with one good example of how to make 3D-printing useful in an educational way for example. However the technique has to evolve a little bit more first but it is good to think about how to make the effort of doing so worth it. The enthusiastic group of people got by the “virus” it already convinced and, as this group is now growing and the technique is getting better and cheaper, it is time to start thinking about the youth. If 3D-printing is the future we have to give the next generation the change to get in contact with it and help them to exploit the possibilities that 3D-printing offers them. If they get this opportunity now they will be prepared for the future. Unfortunately schools tend to need a lot of time to incorporate new techniques in their school. There are some promising steps made, school that already own a printer and use it, but there are also a lot of schools who do not. Hopefully this project will be contribute to another step forward.

For this project I am no longer in the company of my group mates from 3Ducation, since my interest for 3D-printing in education is not only based on my fascination for 3D-printing but also my passion for education. During this project I will continue on the work that has been done before with 3Ducation and combine this with new knowledge to make a concrete application of 3D-printing for educational purposes. Hopefully I will be able to implement this in a real classroom setting to do a case study.

This project does not have a clear research question but it is more a challenge: Create a study program focused on 3D-printing and apply it on a school.

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