After the completion of our Envision The Future design challenge, our wonderful partners at MatterHackers took some of the winning designs to Junior Blind of America, where students and teachers alike, had an opportunity to use the tools that were created and to give feedback!
Director of Transition Services for Junior Blind of America, Rob Schulenburg shares, “With a background in education, I can tell you that the teachers and the service providers that are working with the students that are blind or visually impaired, spend a lot of their time doing materials adaptation for the classroom and looking at abstract concepts for a person who can’t see. To have a model that is tangible and meaningful in a way that we have never been able to fabricate before, is a very exciting part of what is happening in education today.
And that is why this contest is important, because it is bringing forward new ways to represent these concepts with the new technology that we could not use in the past.”
Mara at MatterHackers says, “We got over 165 submissions from young designers under 18 and from adult designers from around the world. We brought the models to Junior Blind of America in Los Angeles. There we were able to get valuable feedback from students and educators on which models they felt to be most useful.”
We are excited to see so many designs that have already been created and are hoping that you will continue to upload more to Pinshape so that we can help build a repository of educational tools that can be easily 3D printed in classrooms around the world, to aid those who are visually impaired, blind or are tactile learners.
To continue to submit your designs to the collection:
STEP 1 – Go to Pinshape.com and upload your design
STEP 2 – Make sure add the #envisionthefuture tag to your design upload.
That’s all there is to it!
Teachers! Consider incorporating the “Envision The Future” design challenge into your 2017/18 STEM based curriculums and encourage your students to participate on their own this summer while on their break!
Kids! Consider helping fill up the tool box over the summer with your designs!
All you need to do is open up Tinkercad or another design tool and start letting your imaginations take flight!
This global e-NABLE Community is about more than making 3D printed hands and arms…we are excited to help create ways to help inspire the future generation of Change Makers who have the ability to use their ideas and imaginations to make a difference in the lives of others, simply by sharing them with those in need!
Please stay tuned for more design challenges coming your way over the summer and in the fall!! Subscribe to the blog to make sure that you don’t miss any of the new and exciting things coming to enablingthefuture.org!