Today’s students are going to be the ones that will be making the largest use of 3D printing in their workplace, so Materialise is turning to them. The Belgian 3D printing service provider and 3D software publisher is awarding a personal 3D printer and other prizes to those that come up with the best idea for its Ideas Worth Making cloud platform.
The new Educate 3D Challenge is aimed at students throughout South East Asia, asking them to imagine how they would use a 3D printer to make education more engaging. The idea, to be submitted between May 19th and June 28, can belong to two main categories: “Purposeful Learning Tools to use in the classroom” and “Exciting School Projects to develop new skills”.
Along with the opportunity to connect with other students and teachers within the growing Ideas Worth Making online community, participants compete to win a V-811 3D printer or Quickview 3D scanner from Malaysian 3D printer manufacturer Vagler. Other prizes include a Sketchup lab license for their school as well as 20 3D printing vouchers for i.Materialise, that will be distributed for the most popular and jury favorite ideas.
Materialise is inviting all teachers and students to join the IWM community, building a network where people all over the world exchange ideas and 3D models of objects and products that may be used in the educational academic context, thus contributing to making 3D printing more of a reality in schools everywhere.
In fact, the biggest challenge to a wider adoption of 3D printing in schools is not – by far – the cost of the hardware, as much as the difficulty in establishing how the 3D printer can be successfully used within scholastic curricula. Creating a challenge to support and stimulate new ideas on how to use 3D printers in school… now there is an idea worth making.
