At European level it is known that there is a lack of digital provision in schools, and a need for digitally confident and supportive teachers. 3D technology is now at the forefront of all design and production techniques. 3D printing technology is widely available for domestic use, but there is little guidance for beginners on how to use it effectively and recognise the potential it presents.Our Erasmus+ partnership aims to make an important contribution to prepare schools to meet the challenges which 3D education will bring.In 2012 3D printing came to a public festival on the island of Vlieland. We were fascinated by this technology and its potential, and wanted to learn more about how to use it in our schools. With the encouragement of the Province of Fryslân, we developed a Comenius partnership to work with other countries to bring 3D thinking and making into schools.This produced a first attempt at a set of lesson plans using 3D technologies in curriculum subjects for the age range 9-16 and guidance for teachers.Significant interest arose in our Province and across the partnership. Our results were plugging a gap in information and resources available to teachers. We are aware that the lesson plans we produced are only a first step, and we now need extensive trials and testing, producing better lesson plans and guidance for a wider age range.We aim to provide new significant professional resources to help teachers become competent and confident in thinking and making in 3D, using 3D technologies, to recognise the potential for enhancing the curriculum and motivating pupils, and show how to integrate 3D-technology across the curriculum. The main concrete output, 3D Education Lesson Plans Resources and Guidance are intended to support teachers with high quality, tried and tested resources to acquire and improve digital competences across a wide range of education contexts for the 11-18 age range.We believe this will bring a lasting strategic impact for the partner schools and its findings will apply across other fields of education. We want to achieve as wide an impact as possible. Our dissemination plan reaches out across each region involving each partner school to cascade training, results and outcomes through active hands-on participation of other schools, wider education fields and people in our communities. It provides a stronger test-bed for our Lesson Plans and results in at least 2,500 indirect beneficiaries.A team of commercial designers/technologists will work closely with our teachers to give intensive training and introduce up to date thinking, design and manufacturing methods into our schools. Crucial aspects of our work depend on advanced technical knowledge and expertise from this team, as well as commercial know-how.Objectives- collaborate intensively across the partnership to discover and learn from best practice in 3D Education- develop teachers’ and pupils’ ability to use 3D technology effectively and with confidence; better prepare our pupils for higher studies, employment and entrepreneurship- produce tangible outputs, including a tried and tested set of high quality 3D Education Lesson Plans, Resources and Guidance, available online, enabling teachers and their pupils to think, create, design and make things using 3D approaches and technology- exploit the transnational nature of our partnership to learn from our combined depth and range of knowledge, experience, cultural differences and commercial backgrounds- extensively disseminate our results and outcomes as a high-profile, hands-on ongoing activity to achieve a significant impact, expanding the test-bed for our concrete outcomes and increasing the capacity for others to benefitTarget groupsPupils of 11 - 18Initially teachers of IT; Technology; Design and Technology; Mathematics; Art; Design; Architecture; Sciences (Physics, Chemistry)Subsequently teachers of a wider range of subjectsActively through dissemination networksTeachers and pupils in other schools in the local or regional area of each partnerProfessionals in teacher training organisations in each local or regional areaMembers of our wider communitiesOur methodology: intensive training, exchange of practice, production of tangible outputs, trials and testing, active disseminationOur activities: an intensive training week for teachers; a pupils’ exchange week; 5 international project meetings and mini-workshops to exchange and demonstrate the host schools’ practice in 3D education, to critically discuss and evaluate its new lesson plans; online meetings; intensive, ongoing project activities; ongoing active disseminationThese activities will enable our teachers and pupils to develop new thinking and digital skills, understanding of how to think in 3D, able to confidently use 3D technologies to create, design and manufacture in 3D, and use these skills in cross-curriculum contexts with high levels of digital competence.
The 3D in education project is a follow-up from the 3D Comenius project. A few partners of that project decided to start a follow up with a Erasmus+ KA 2 project. The result was a new project with the title 3D in education. In the project participated 8 schools with students in age range from 4 till 18 years old. In the project were also designers invited and NAVET science centre from Sweden. The project started with a trainings week in Sweden visited by designers, teachers and selected students. The goal of the trainings week was to give the project a good start. After the trainings week in January 2017 there were in every participating country a project meeting. In this meeting we shared experience and talked about the progress of the report. In every meeting there were workshops, presentations by teachers and students. We also discussed about the workplan. Between de meetings every partner was working on the lessonplans (developing, testing, reflection and evaluation). We build and filled the website www.e3du.eu and the projects Trello board with lessonplans, test results from hardware and software. On our Trello board there is also a overview from dissemination. The project was closed by a big final event at the school on Vlieland. All the project partners but also local entrepreneurs, the province of Friesland, the regional waste processor, the local energy company, professor Dr. Han Brezet from the University of Delft and a lot of other participants.