This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
About My Students
The students who led the way with the creation of this project are all intelligent, creative, and eager to expand their horizon in STEM. These are all valuable members of school's robotics team, which is one of the most popular elements of our school.
Each year, we compete in a robotics competition, called FTC (First Tech Challange) across the US. Students are treated as pioneers in our school due to the success of our robotics team. They organize outreach events to spread the word of robotics, engineering, and design. They try their best to reach out to local business leaders to find sponsorships.
One of the categories of the competition that is taken under consideration is the uniqueness of the parts of robots. Until this year, we had a 3D printer and it was being used to print unique and essential parts for our robot which provides the team much more advantageous position at the competitions. Unfortunately, it is broken and we are in need of a new 3D printer. Many of these students want to pursue a career in the field of engineering and with this 3D printer they choose, you will help them make their dreams come true.
Through this project, my students will develop real life problem-solving skills. Each year a new challenge is being released. Then students start to build, design, and write their journey in the engineering notebook. This project will help them to 'mobilize the plastic' using their creativity. To overcome the obstacles of the challenge of this year, they will use their theoretical knowledge to design 3D parts or they will use this 3D printer to turn their ideas into reality.
They will also learn how to work as a team and help others who are in need. Once we start printing the parts that we need, they will teach the use of 3D printers in real-life at the outreach events that we participate. Until this year, kids loved the 3D printers the most. It draws everybody's attention and helps us a lot to have people think about engineering and its contributions to our lives.
In Their Own Words
The first goal that we try to accomplish with this 3D printer project is to increase our chances at robotics competitions because unique designs require the teams to use 3D printers to have creative parts on the robot. The second goal is to decrease our team's expenses. Instead of buying every single part, we can design and print it and it will be not only creative but also cheaper. Finally, the last goal of this project is to give students who are in Introduction to Engineering class a better opportunity to understand 3D designs and their applications in real-life. Thanks to this project, they might be able to connect what they learn to real-life.
We, along with the help of our mentors, will use our printer to make our robot function better. Since we are coming from low-income families, we should spend our money carefully and the robot parts are not cheap. If we use this 3D printer to print out parts such as; battery holders, phone cases, gear boxes, brackets, spacers, C-channels etc., it will reduce the amount of money we spend a lot. We can then use this knowledge to teach the community. Once we have this 3D printer, we can demonstrate the parts that we print at the outreach events and inform other teams that share the same destiny with us to lessen their expenses and have access to this sort of opportunity.
This will help us draw in students with an interest in STREAM (Science, Technology, Robotics, Engineering, Art, and Math) to our school/team. We will guide them on a path to their future and improve the world with the technology by these students. Everybody loves 3D printers and the printed parts. This year, as a robotics team, we dedicated ourselves to increase the number of female students in the field of engineering, starting from our school's robotics team. We believe that if we can create this in our school environment, it will then affect our city, state, country and then maybe even the world. Because as you may know, big differences start with a small step.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mr. P. and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.