Helping our local animal shelter with 3D-printed bookmarks

The main goal of our project is to create a highly equipped and connected classroom on the entry level, empower our students with 21st-century digital skills and increase our school's digital maturity. And we plan to achieve that with a makerspace classroom in our school.

Thanks to the LfE funding, we equipped our makerspace classroom with laptops for our students, classroom management software, an interactive board with educational software, Ozobot coding robots and a 3D printer. Also, we supplied our makerspace with materials like clay, cardboard, and wood to connect modern technologies and traditional arts and crafts in our classroom. During their free or study periods, our students can now use the tools and materials in the makerspace to create projects based on their interests or things they're currently studying in class. In our makerspace, students learn new skills and practice using different computer programs, digital equipment, and other materials. Makerspaces foster our students' curiosity, enthusiasm for learning, confidence, and natural collaboration. They lead students to determination, independent and creative problem-solving, and authentic preparation for the real world by simulating real-world challenges.

One of the first projects in our makerspace was a 3D printing workshop where we printed bookmarks with our school logo.  Our school librarian and the project coordinator held a 3D printing workshop for our students during World Book Day. Students learned how to design a bookmark with our school logo and prepare it for printing. 

The first step in making a 3D-printed bookmark with our school logo was to draw it in Paint 3D, a simple raster graphics and 3D computer graphics application. After that, we uploaded our JPG image to an online file converter and converted it to a web-friendly vector format, an SVG file.

The next step in our 3D printing workshop was for our students to learn how to use Tinkercad, a free web app for 3D design, and design a 3D model of a bookmark. That was a very simple task for our students because they had to upload an SVG file of our bookmark to Tinkercad and save it as an STL file, a format commonly used for 3D printing and computer-aided design (CAD). The name STL is an acronym that stands for stereolithography - a popular 3D printing technology.

The last step in preparing our 3D bookmark model for printing was using the Ultimaker Cura programme. This 3D slicing software prepares a 3D model for printing in G-Code, a language that describes how a 3D printer should print a job.

Our students copied the GCODE file from Ultimaker Cura to an SD card and uploaded it to our 3D printer that printed our bookmarks. 

Since our local animal shelter ''Luč Zagorja'' is always in need of food and other supplies for their animals in need, and some of our students and their parents occasionally volunteer there, they came to the idea for a humanitarian project in which we will make some products in our makerspace to sell at our school fair and raise money for the shelter animals. Since our students were delighted with the 3D-printed bookmarks, they  decided to sell them at the school fair and raise money for a good cause. Students used their every free moment to print bookmarks in different colours and made a beautiful label for the bookmark packaging. 

After the school fair, our students and their teachers visited the animal shelter and brought them food and supplies for the animals. 

The primary objective of our makerspace is more integrated learning, helping students make connections across curricula rather than projects focused on a specific subject, as well as better collaboration with our local community. As a result, our students are learning to create and innovate while working with others. In addition, our makerspace is where our teachers can teach our students essential skills such as problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and multitasking. They are transforming learning by moving classrooms from static places where we passively receive information into dynamic communities that promote inquiry, collaboration, and creativity while enabling our students to be creators rather than just consumers of educational content.

This project will also help the development of responsible citizenship among our students, which is its best asset.