{"id":10363,"date":"2019-01-29T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T13:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/?p=10363"},"modified":"2019-01-25T12:07:33","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T17:07:33","slug":"jackie-tan-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/2019\/01\/jackie-tan-part-3.html","title":{"rendered":"Jackie Tan Teaches Future Makers with SOLIDWORKS Apps for Kids, Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part Three: 3D Tech Squad Takeover and Sharing a Legacy<\/b><\/p>\n

\"A
A note from one of the Jackie’s students<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jackie Tan<\/a> is a Maker Lab teacher at South Tahoe Middle School<\/a> in South Lake Tahoe, CA. After discovering and falling in love with 3D printing, she is in the process of creating a sustainable Maker program at her middle school, and is utilizing SOLIDWORKS Apps for Kids<\/a> to do so. Read Part One<\/a> \u00a0and Part Two<\/a> of her story.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cSo let me tell you what else I\u2019m doing,\u201d Jackie said as I listened intently, beyond excited for her Maker Lab\u2019s future. Jackie has a lot of plans in the works\u2014she wants to build something sustainable before she retires\u2014but her biggest project involves the entire school. With the help of local philanthropic groups, she has recently received funding for three Maker carts, mobile carts with 3D printers, filaments, and more materials of invention, for classroom teachers around the school. There will be one cart per grade level. <\/span><\/p>\n

While Jackie prepares to purchase the three Maker carts, she has created a 3D Tech Squad, made up of thirty-one students from all grade levels. Members of the 3D Tech Squad \u00a0will learn how to change filament, upload files to printers, remove models from plates, and so on, so they can support the teachers with the Maker carts. These students and teachers will all learn SOLIDWORKS Apps for Kids<\/a> so they can work on the next aspect of the project: teaching <\/span>everyone<\/span><\/i> at the school how to be Makers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dodo
Dodo bird, duck, and grappling hook prints<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIn social studies, [students] will be modeling artifacts they\u2019re learning about in class. In language arts, they\u2019ll be modeling characters or other artifacts from stories they read. In math, they\u2019ll be modeling manipulatives and games. And in science, they\u2019ll be modeling the things they use in experiments,\u201d Jackie said. It\u2019s a huge project aimed at spreading the Maker mentality to the entirety of the school\u2019s population. \u201cI\u2019m going to have a separate 3D printer in the principal\u2019s office, because he wants one. He\u2019s fascinated by [3D printing], which is great because if he\u2019s fascinated he\u2019ll excite other people,\u201d Jackie told me. \u201cSo I\u2019ll teach him SOLIDWORKS Apps for Kids and let him start modeling.\u201d She plans on rolling the principal\u2019s 3D printer into the school\u2019s front hallway, so the entire student body can see the prints running every day. \u201cI don\u2019t want printing to only happen in the Maker Lab,\u201d Jackie said. \u201cBy January, we should have nine printers on campus, four in my classroom and five outside of my classroom.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Now that she\u2019s discovered 3D printing, Jackie has devoted herself to the Maker community. She runs workshops and gets support from teachers in Sonoma County, CA, and also attends the reMAKE<\/a> conference every summer. \u201cI just learned about Flashforge Finder [3D printers] at the conference, then two weeks later I had the opportunity to buy them, and they\u2019re just fantastic,\u201d Jackie said over the sound of her 3D printers printing away.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"An
An 8th grade soldering project<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of growth happening right now and some really excellent management choices being made by our principal, which is really opening up communication between all the departments,\u201d she said. Teachers can sometimes feel isolated in their classrooms, and Jackie sees Maker as something can be the glue that holds the teaching curriculum together; educators can teach STEM across the curriculum and she has a way of sharing it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want the means to share everything I know with other teachers. We\u2019re now setting up pathways to offer professional development at elementary, middle, and high school levels,\u201d said Jackie. \u201cI want to make this a sustainable program within the next four years. Huge, right?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s gargantuan. By the time her current sixth graders get to eighth grade, Jackie expects them to be knocking down her door for the chance to create in the Maker Lab. She only has room for two classes of twenty-five students, fifty in all, but it\u2019s a pretty good problem to have. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Jackie's
Jackie’s students using power tools<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jackie also pushes for girls to join her in the Maker Lab. \u201cAny time I have the choice, I always make sure that girls make up at least half the class. In my regular electives, they don\u2019t quite make up half, and in one of my eighth grade electives, unfortunately, the numbers are very low for girls, which is hard on them,\u201d she said. \u201cBut our goal is to very quickly have classes always be 50\/50, and represent our student population.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I asked Jackie if she had any advice for other educators thinking about entering the Maker community. \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid to start!\u201d she said. \u201cFind people who are a step ahead of you. In the Maker world, we want to support other people. Anything that\u2019s taken me a long time to figure out, I would love to help someone figure it out quickly, and that\u2019s the Maker mindset. We\u2019re all about sharing.\u201d She went on to say, \u201cI want to help teachers [get into the Maker community]. If teachers want to get in, we have to support them in figuring out where the network is for them to get the help they need. Twitter is a good place. I\u2019m only just building my network<\/a> on Twitter right now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"6th
6th grade prints<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

By the middle of December, over 115 of Jackie\u2019s students received their first 3D printed parts. Jackie is currently saving up some of her favorite prints, which she calls her \u201call-stars\u201d to inspire her future students, the future Makers. As Jackie\u2019s program and network grow, we hope to see her methods and passion spread. It takes a lot to build a sustainable program like the one Jackie is using SOLIDWORKS Apps for Kids and her 3D printers to construct, but she is a Maker. And she\u2019s going to make something amazing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you to Jackie Tan for taking the time to talk about her experiences as a teacher, a Maker, and with SOLIDWORKS Apps for Kids. She is on Twitter at @stmsmakerlab<\/a>. All images courtesy of Jackie Tan.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part Three: 3D Tech Squad Takeover and Sharing a Legacy   Jackie Tan is a Maker Lab teacher at South Tahoe Middle School in South Lake Tahoe, CA. After discovering and falling in love with 3D printing, she is in<\/p>\n... Continued<\/a>","protected":false},"author":409,"featured_media":10366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6549,4184,4183,5491,5891,5205,5380,5206],"tags":[4016,5580,5301,5483,5613,6620,6621,6382,6455,6624,3930,6552,5700,4781,5487,6616,4375,6619,5803,5914,6617,5479,4021,6623,6622,3931,5892,6618,6394,4019],"class_list":["post-10363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apps-for-kids","category-cad-instructor","category-cad-teacher","category-customer-stories","category-solidworks-apps-for-kids","category-stem-course","category-stem-science-technology-engineering-and-math","category-stem-teacher","tag-3d-cad","tag-3d-print","tag-3d-printer","tag-3d-printers","tag-3d-printing","tag-6th-grade","tag-7th-grade","tag-8th-grade","tag-apps-for-kids","tag-apps-for-kids-classroom","tag-cad","tag-cad-for-kids","tag-cad-teacher","tag-classroom","tag-fab-lab","tag-jackie-tan","tag-kids","tag-lab","tag-maker","tag-maker-faire","tag-maker-lab","tag-makers","tag-middle-school","tag-play-doh","tag-printing","tag-solidworks","tag-solidworks-apps-for-kids","tag-south-tahoe-middle-school","tag-swappsforkids","tag-teacher"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/409"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10363"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10372,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10363\/revisions\/10372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/teacher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}