Bringing History to Life

I love working with my Social Studies teachers.  They are willing to try almost anything to get their students engaged.  Our 8th grade Social Studies teacher was working on a Civil War Battles unit with his students.  Students had to complete a project that provided information regarding a battle.  They had to list the location, which side won, what led up to the specific battle, casualties and such.  Students had to have some time of artifact to present along with their project.  Some of their options included:
1) Design and create a monument/ artifact in Tinkercad to be printed on our 3D printer.
2) Create a monument or battlefield in Minecraft.
3) Create a newscast where the reporter is coming "live" from the scene of a battle.

I have to say that the products created from this project have been some of my favorites so far.  What I'm noticing is that when the teacher provides them the opportunity to be creative, they come up with some pretty amazing things.

3D Printed items

Students really took the creation of their 3D items seriously and challenged me a bit along the way.  We learned some valuable lessons about the scale of items created in Tinkercad and how to use SVG files and Inkscape to create intricate designs.

With scale, one of the monuments a student created was 300mm x 800mm.  We had to have a quick lesson about millimeters, centimeters and inches in order to make the monument printable.

Another student wanted to not only make a cannon, but a rolling cannon.  The student creating this had to consider where to put the axle so the cannon wouldn't tip over.  He had to take precise measurements of the axle and the hole in the cannon so it would roll.  He also learned how to create an SVG file in Inkscap and then transfer it to Tinkercad to make the wheels.  I helped him to use the 3D pen to "weld" the wheels to the axle.  The result was pretty awesome.

Minecraft Battle Memorials

While only a few students opted to create a 3D printed design, more students chose to create monuments and battlefields in Minecraft.  I am constantly amazed at what students create with what amounts to different types of cubes.









Green Screen Newscast

Only one group decided to do a newscast from the battlefield, but it was priceless.  The girls didn't want to be seen on camera and the only puppet I had was Miss Piggy.  She became their star!  Their script included a news desk scene and one on site.  They wanted the correspondent to be a male.  To transform Miss Piggy, the girls sewed their own jacket for her and gave her a mustache.  Their script was mainly facts with a little bit of sideways humor thrown in.  The result - hamtastic!