MakerBot Celebrates The National Week of Making with our Washington, D.C. STEAM Makeathon

Taken from Makerbot.

POSTED BY JESSICA ADAMS

In celebration of this year’s National Week of Making, we held our final MakerBot STEAM Makeathon in the nation’s capital. Educators collaborated together on exciting 3D printing projects and lessons that will inspire our next generation of tinkerers, designers, builders, and makers. They took a two-day journey through the world of 3D printing with the MakerBot team, who hosted breakout sessions on 3D design, modeling, printing, and more. As with the previous Makeathons, educators split into teams to design and create 3D printing projects for their classrooms and went on to compete for the first place prize of MakerBot Replicator 3D Printers.

To get things started, we asked educators to pick an activity or lesson already in use in their classrooms and enhance it with 3D printing. Attendees continued to innovate by creating 3D printing projects that they went on to present to the rest of the group. On the second day, they voted for the lesson plans they believed to be the strongest and most inspiring.

The Winners

States of Confusion won first place for their lesson plan, “Elevator of Terror”. This project is a pulley challenge that asks 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students to use gear ratios to transport a small elevator. Students must rely on measurement and modeling skills to determine the correlation between size and ratio for the gears. Each team member won a MakerBot Replicator 3D Printer.

BB8 Maker Sabers won second place with their BB-8 Jedi Joust challenge. To win the challenge, high school students must learn to program a sphero so it can navigate through a course with obstacles, towers, and rings. Students must use engineering concepts like balance, symmetry, friction, weight, pivoting, and more to their advantage. This project won each team member an Ozobot Starter Pack and a copy of our handbook, MakerBot in the Classroom.

See winners here.