Makerbot vows to plonk a 3D printer in every one of Uncle Sam's schools Makerbot, one of the most visible companies behind 3D printing, has kicked off a new program that aims to get one of its mini-manufacturies in every school in America. "As a former teacher, I believe strongly in creating a new model for innovation. A MakerBot is a manufacturing education in a box," gushed Makerbot CEO Bre …
When I was at school we had wood and metalwork shops and lessons and we did create things using materials and techniques which were much more relevant to real world manufacturing then than 3D printing is now.
I still have and use a pipe wrench I made from steel 40 years ago.
Just more 3D printing is the future bullshit. Only real value I can see is in supporting the teaching of 3D CAD although having to make what you designed on a CNC mill would be much more informative.
I can understand your thinking behind that easy put down, but I'm sure he's right. If you consider how this will probably be used by children and teachers, it will be like the teaching of 'computing' using Word and Excel to teach children 'how computers work'. You don't teach someone how a car works by showing them how to drive it around a quiet urban backstreet.
Your point is?I created one of those teethed musical blocks that you scrape a stick over in music lessons and a metal fireplace shovel - neither of which I now possess.
I welcome anything that allows kids to more creative - period. It's not about what you create - its about the opportunities to spark their imagination.
"its about the opportunities to spark their imagination."
The problem is that if they only have one in a school, there are not going to be a lot of opportunities to go round. It takes hours to pint one item so what percentage of the students get to have a go.
When I was in School we had one trampoline*. Half the class waited around for their 2 minute turn, the rest of us gave up and did something else (horizontal bar in my case).
* until "hay watch me do a double back flip dismount"
...a product, let's not forget, that comes at a price out of which somewhere between two and four generic but certainly equally capable other 3D printers can be had. Not to mention that a fair bit of the kinds of plastic used by 3D printers can be ground up, re-melted and extruded as new filament for the printer (there even was a Kickstarter project a while ago for just such a machine): I wonder how many of those Makerbot plans to deploy, considering I'm pretty sure a rather high percentage of the stuff they print would become, ummm, "redundant" rather soon? Awww, but that's not quite as lucrative, innit...
Yeah, it'll work for turning the kids to them IFF (if and only if) they work without issues. All the Macs in the schools I attended had no end of issues and would crash at the drop of a hat if things were not done in JUST the right order. They did have Lunatic Fringe in AfterDark that wasn't available on the PC version that was full of awesomesauce, but other than that, rather a turn off working on that crap at school.
Advertising your product by helping out cash-strapped schools (and positioning yourself in the market with those schools, parents and future customers) is obviously of great benefit to company doing it, along with the risk, as someone pointed out above that they could simply get interested in the product and then buy the cheaper alternative (android devices still eclipse ipad sales even though they are pushed out to schools, altruistically of course). But the bottom line is that this still benefits the kids and the schools and that can only be a good thing. As long as McDonalds don't start pushing out school meals, altruistically of course.
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