Digital fabrication can encourage students to work collaboratively, stay focused on goals, and develop 21st century skills, while creating interesting products. I will discuss how development of manipulative sketch objects improves spatial reasoning and sketching skills. I will also talk about how we have developed a student maker group willing to train their peers and teachers in the art of digital fabrication.
There will be a display and explanation of Davidson Desktop Doohickey Puzzle Cubes (term final projects), sketching manipulatives for Introduction to Engineering Design students, and some of the products that student makers at Riverside High School have completed at the request of various faculty and staff members. These same students have gone on to develop and implement training sessions and videos for our Ultimaker printers and ShopBot Desktop MAX CNC routers. Our students are an integral part of managing the digital fabrication resources in the RHS engineering labs.
