#ultimaker

It's incredible that there's a free 3d printing service available at the local library! I'm so used to asking friends to send me 5p to print in bw way back at school 🖨

— Luigi Cicala (@LuigiTeaching) February 14, 2018

Last week, Class II completed their Lenape “buzzer” toy project. Luigi Cicala (@LuigiTeaching) is an amazing artist, teacher, and Director of the CoLab, The Brearley School’s soon to be launched makerspace. In anticipation of having an actual physical space dedicated to making, fabricating, and project based learning, Luigi has been developing creative, integrated, and thoughtful STEAM-rich projects with faculty across multiple grades and disciplines. With this in mind, Luigi ideated a variety of projects to correlate with Class II’s study of The Lenape. This year’s chosen project was to create a “buzzer” toy — I totally remember making these as a kid with yarn threaded through plastic buttons (or drilling holes in a wooden disk). Now that we’re well into the 21st Century, these students used an iPad to design the button shape, and this was 3D-printed for them.

Students talked about symmetry and made paper designs with Luigi in their classrooms with Rebecca Chynsky (@rchynsky) and Betsy Warren. Additionally, girls could use paper divided into a quadrant to sketch a design to gain a sense of symmetry and test for it by folding along the lines (or axes). While the concept of symmetry might not be readily understandable, folding a shape and seeing if it overlaps fully (either up/down or side/side) is a fun exercise. In computer class with Virginia Avetisian (@vavetisedu) and Marina Jackson, students used Doodle3D on the iPads to sketch a shape with their fingers, give it some height, and include two cylindrical holes (like a button). These were exported as STL files and printed using our Ultimaker Original+ printers which were built from kits a few years ago by upper school students. I helped with the actual printing and spent many hours over the next few weeks ensuring each student’s digital sketch was transformed into a plastic “buzzer” for their enjoyment.

THANK YOU @KarenBlumberg for all the hard work you have put into this Lenape-toy-inspired #maker project @BrearleyNYC, can’t wait to see all the pieces come together! https://t.co/xwCBHkstQT

— Luigi Cicala (@LuigiTeaching) December 13, 2017

Here’s a video of one of our “buzzer” toy prototypes in action!