Day 22 : A lesson in gratitude

Today marks a special day, it's the last class which we would be teaching 3D printing. We arrived at the school in the afternoon, and it's interesting to see that the kids are willing to spend their afternoons after tiring day at school with us to learn about 3D printing.

After setting up the banners and 3D printers, we immediately got to work. The software that we are using, SketchUp is either extremely simple, or very difficult to use depending on whether you understand how it functions. I took the liberty to explain the core concept about surface modelling, which is quite a difficult concept even for university students after seeing students befuddled when their models go crazy. The first task was for students to design their own name tags, and the first ones to do it may see their creations being printed live from the 3D printer.

The Learning Environment

In the next session, it was time for the students to make their dream house! Some of the students were really engaged in it, and below you can see some of their creations.

Students presenting their dream house

We were very surprised to receive a thank you note from the students, and was a really kind gesture. I hope that the students found this lesson in 3D modelling useful.

Thank you notes!

After the lesson, we had a chance to talk about our teaching strategies with the very experienced teacher, Sue Ann. She's part of the Teach for Malaysia initiative, and I have to say that she is a very enthusiastic and passionate in what she does. There were many issues that we touched upon, and here is the main learning for the day:

"Ultimately, I think there's always a need for what goals you want to achieve for any give lesson. It helps you direct and guide what you are teaching and you also know how to measure if you have taught in the right direction. But then you can also let them flow freely to reach the objectives, which can be structured to guide them to reach it. Nevertheless, telling the kids what you expect them to achieve in the lesson keeps them on track because then they would then know what to do. " -Sue Ann

I agree with her, and I hope that we can tailor our future classes to serve the students better. 

Our lovely students