It is a ‘first-of- its-kind’ High Tech Learning Lab for elementary school students in Jordan School District made possible through a partnership with the Utah Jazz, Utah Mammoth and America First Credit Union.

On this episode of the Supercast, we take you inside the Learning Lab where students are wild with excitement over 3D printing, stop motion robotics, coding, and so much more. Listen and you will hear the sounds of technology hard at work.

Audio Transcription

Traci Rindlisbach:
We thought that was so exciting to give the kids a chance to 3D print. Not just pressing a button, they're going to start modeling their prints.

Jared Covili:
We want students not to just be technology consumers where they just use it to find the latest game or the latest trend online. We want them to become technology creators and that's the core of what this space is.

[music]

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It is a first-of-its-kind, high-tech learning lab for elementary school students in Jordan School District, made possible through a partnership with the Utah Jazz, Utah Mammoth, and America First Credit Union. On this episode of the Supercast, we take you inside the learning lab where students are wild with excitement over 3D printing, stop-motion robotics, coding, and so much more. Listen and you will hear the sounds of technology hard at work.

[music]

Anthony Godfrey:
We are at Juniper Elementary School, home of the Jordan Innovation Lab, with two of the people who helped make this possible. Please introduce yourselves and let's get right into it.

Traci Rindlisbach:
Hi, I'm Traci Rindlisbach. I work for Digital Teaching and Learning and I got to help set up the Innovation Lab.

Jared Covili:
My name is Jared Covili. I'm the administrator over the Digital Teaching and Learning Department and I'm just a fan of the Innovation Lab.

Anthony Godfrey:
I am a fan too. I just walked in, but I've heard so much about it and I was not able to be here for the ribbon cutting, but so many great reports about student reactions and the reactions from the donors who made it happen. But let's jump right into a project. Let's not just talk about it. Let's get down to business. So we have 3D printers all the way along this wall and you've 3D printed a bunch of things already for the launch. Tell me about that and tell me about the project we're going to do right now.

Traci Rindlisbach:
All right, so we bought two different types of 3D printers. We bought these Bamboo Lab 3D printers, which are super exciting because you can print four different colors and these are a little more serious 3D printers. Then we have these tiny toy boxes as well that are just like super fast prints and just like you're dipping your toes in there to start a print.

Anthony Godfrey:
So I didn't even see the little ones in between. So yeah, wow. So we've got 10 of them right here.

Traci Rindlisbach:
Yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
That's amazing that this is a this is a playground for kids to well for you, too. This is this is this is pretty exciting. So what's our what's our project here?

Traci Rindlisbach:
Okay, so on this Bamboo printer, we've printed a whole bunch of things like when we were opening, we printed like the Jordan shield two colors, the Mammoth logos and the Jazz logos. All those logos were printed. We're just going to have you print a guitar pick for yourself since we know you're all about playing guitar.

Anthony Godfrey:
Absolutely.

Traci Rindlisbach:
So the first thing you're going to do is you're going to hit this file right here.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, so I'm accessing the templates or the designs.

Traci Rindlisbach:
These are just all the G codes like put on there and there's your pick right there.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, that's perfect.

Traci Rindlisbach:
Yeah, just click that.

Anthony Godfrey:
So click on that.

Traci Rindlisbach:
Then the PLA we've chosen . . .

Anthony Godfrey:
It has a nice edge for gripping the . . That's a well-designed pick. That was a well-designed pick. Absolutely. I can really wail with this one.

Traci Rindlisbach:
Okay. And so we're going to do this metal PLA because we tested it with the other one and it broke.

Anthony Godfrey:
So okay, this is like choosing letter or legal paper.

Traci Rindlisbach:
Yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, except we're going to choose the right and so which, which one . . .

Traci Rindlisbach:
Right here this print now.

Anthony Godfrey:
Print now. You've already set it up to print like .

Traci Rindlisbach:
Yeah, you just set it. We can click right here and you can choose the different PLAs.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, right there.

Traci Rindlisbach:
And then it's good to go. And it's going to be printed in. See right here. 13 minutes.

Anthony Godfrey:
13 minutes. Okay, we're at 0%. Temperature 69 Celsius. Okay, we're going up.

Jared Covili:
You're going to be able to add this to your resume. You're now officially a maker of a metal guitar pick.

Traci Rindlisbach:
You can sell these at your shows.

Jared Covili:
You can start your own Etsy shop.

Anthony Godfrey:
This is the one I won't flip out into the crowd. Okay, we will let a watch pot never boils and a watch print never comes to fruition. So we're going to let that simmer while we talk a little bit about how the lab started. So we were contacted by the Smith Entertainment Group, Utah Jazz, the Mammoth and America First [Credit Union] with the concept of building something that was centered around innovation, something unique for students. What excited me is that they knew that was generally in the STEM area, but it felt like there was going to be a lot of flexibility in how we shape that. So talk to me about how we decided what to do and what that partnership look like.

Jared Covili:
Yeah, we were approached by Mike Haynes from the Jordan Education Foundation, probably in May. He mentioned the idea that the Smith Entertainment Group and America First Credit Union wanted to help us build something that could really enhance students’ education. They said, “you know, we want it to have kind of an innovative blend to it, right? So we're not looking for traditional forms of learning. We'd like to use technology.” And immediately Traci got involved. She's one of our people that's very involved in STEM and computer science in our District. So we started talking about what would be some of the great tools that we could provide kids with this additional funds. We wanted to give them an experience that they couldn't have at their regular at the regular school.

Anthony Godfrey:
So what made you go this direction and tell me about what's here?

Traci Rindlisbach:
My STEM partner, Kelly Cannon, she works in the same department as I do. We have been really into 3D printing since we both came into this role. We thought that is so exciting to give the kids a chance to 3D print because it's like not just like pressing a button. They're going to like start modeling their prints and doing all those like engineering design processes through just learning how to 3D print and 3D printing.

Anthony Godfrey:
So what does it mean to model for those who haven't done 3D printing before?

Traci Rindlisbach:
That's a great idea. Create their prints. So they'll go into some kind of program. They could go into Tinkercad or on these toy boxes you can do modeling inside the app of itself. And so you'll just go and create whatever you want inside there and send it to this little printer and it will print what you've done. Now will it be perfect? Maybe if you did it correctly. But there's also that fun element of like they're going to go back and iterate and say, “oh, that didn't work. I'm going to fix this and this and this on my print until it's perfect.”

Anthony Godfrey:
Is that why we have the smaller printers so that they can dabble and kind of test things out before they go to the multi color printer or do they dive right in?

Traci Rindlisbach:
It's really an either situation like they could start on the toy box if they felt more comfortable with that. This is like a more entry level like modeling system. You'll just pull some shapes in and you'll start joining your shapes. You could pull in photos and you can make some lithographs where like if you put a light behind it, it shows like whatever photo you put into there. On the Bamboo, they would be modeling probably in Tinkercad and that would be a little more serious modeling, but still with shapes and things. So this one's just a more friendly model to get started with. But we did have a student on opening day who was really stoked about the Bamboos and talked about his Bamboo at home and what he's doing at home. So I think there's going to be kids coming in who've had a lot of experience with 3D printing and they're going to be able to teach the other students as well.

Anthony Godfrey:
OK, and tell me again, how do you model something? Do you is that essentially designing it virtually so that it can then become something that is physically tangible in the real world?

Traci Rindlisbach:
Yes, that's a good question. So in Tinkercad they would like design it inside the Tinkercad program and then they would slice it on the slicer and then put it right in here and it would print on out.

Anthony Godfrey:
So in other words, stu...

Episode 315: Inside the Brand New “High Tech Learning Lab” Where Students are Loving Exciting Hands-On Experiences