The Future of Education

This paper describes the research “Primaria 3D” as part of “Maker@School”, a project led by INDIRE.

The project is focused on the introduction of the 3D printer in the classroom, involving different areas of expertise. The structure (previous tested in another research project in pre-school) is based on a storyline that is organized as a quest with different  tasks to solve. The objects that have to be designed and constructed are key pieces for moving on with the story. All tasks assigned to the classes that take part of in our research with the 3D Printer are introduced as open problems and require a problem-focused, action-oriented participatory process. The problem has to be decomposed and processed for a specific situation. Not an unique solution is the goal but to  thinking-through different options and to find a wide variety of possible solutions to fulfill the task. This is reflected in the TMI: a method of designs or project cycles, the Think-Make-Improve cycle.

Tasks are aligned with the Italian National Curriculum and teachers are free to decide to which skill and/or discipline to focus in class.

Primaria 3D is an experimental proposal to the schools and a research project, so, we have two different kind of aims. On one hand, we must identify a structure for sustain an experimentation of the 3D print based on the execution of the tasks through the TMI cycle with more than 50 primary schools. On the other hand, as a research result, our intention is to establish “good practices”, that can be used a as a guideline  the 3D printer as real part of the everyday didactic activity on a strict relationship with the curriculum and that are documented so to be useful example for other teachers. In order to achieve these aims, we try to propose an online environment oriented to self evaluation, peer review, reflection and sharing. This model will be the object of the present paper.