We sell our kids short.
We think they are younger and their abilities
are less than what they can actually do.
These kids may not be able
to express themselves traditionally in school.
The reason that I teach is to make a change in little ones' lives,
but I worry about the little ones that don’t know what their passion is
or that they don’t know what their strength is.
And we have kind shut down already.
If you can find something where they have fun,
where they can be strong,
3D design is something that lets them just be free.
We in education are making a huge paradigm shift.
We coming around to the idea that kids
actually need to know how to think.
They need to be able to imagine things
they don’t know are possible.
I’ve seen a lot of exciting things that have taken place
since I started PROJECT IGNITE with my students.
I have students that wouldn’t be considered the leaders
of the classroom or the most popular,
even kids have gotten labeled with a disability
or a reading problem.
And those students,
because they are visual,
and 3D design is something that is their talent and strength,
they have reached out and started designing.
You can basically make anything you want.
The only limit in Tinkercad is your imagination.
I get to see the designs come to life in my hands.
I love watching the students actually interact.
What is really amazing is they become so insanely intent and
focused on what they are trying to accomplish.
As we were observing what the students were doing with Tinkercad,
I looked by this little guy.
And he created a little egg with little chicken feet
and little hands that had come out with mittens.
Kind of a Mikey Mouse type hand
and little tilted bunny ears,
and these bunny ears had depth,
and size, and shape.
And he’d done all of that in the first 15 minutes
when everybody else was doing their little shapes
and forms and moving things.
So, I said, “Hey, guys, come take a look at this!”
And everybody came around the table and watched him.
I saw him grow 3 feet tall.
He had something to share.
and so, we just took off from there.
I stepped back
and the whole class was learning from him.
He became the leader for that in the class.
It changed his life.
It made him the leader.
And he saw his importance and value.
I see where the world is going,
and I see what is important,
and I see 3D design as being our artistic way,
a visual way to make the world different.
And I know that the concepts that are in math and science,
that are important to be successful,
are embedded inside 3D design.
For example,
the math skill's addressed when you ask kids
to create a rectangle to specific dimensions
teaches so much more in a 3D Design software.
where they're working in (word plane?)
and they actually manipulating the letters
and seeing it visually as it goes up and down,
that is so much more meaningful
than trying to teach that on pencil and paper.
And of course, for students
what we want to teach them
is that failure is how you learn.
You have to fail many, many, many times to come out with
ultimately your desired product at the end.
They really start to understand there are steps to mastery,
and there really seems to be this intrinsic
motivation that we see
that sort of comes through the curiosity.
If we can help kids at the back of the class,
the ones that don’t self-identify as the, you know,
the ones in the clubs and sort of high-achieving
and they might doubt their own abilities.
That, if we present learning to them in a different way
that really fits their learning style,
That they can go on and become the rock stars of tomorrow