If you climb the stairs to the Sto-Rox Jr./Sr. High School Chorus room on a given day during the fall semester, you won’t hear printing.
Instead, you’ll hear the nearly imperceptible thrum made by one of several 3D printers along the far wall.
That’s because for this class, Jes Bromley - known for her chorus expertise - is putting her other speciality to work.
“I have a music and a technology certification,” she said during a quiet stretch of class time. “We’ve turned the space into a tech class because I think coding is really important. But I think there’s a lot more than just coding that can go into it.”
That’s where 3D printing comes in, utilizing a software known as Tinkercad.
“It’s an online software that (the students) can access,” said Bromley. “Then they send it to me when the design is done and then they print it.”
“It can be very complicated, you know?” said Michael Harris, a senior at Sto-Rox Jr./Sr. High School. “It takes a lot of work to maneuver your shapes.”
He proudly held a white pumpkin he designed with a curved mouth and eyes. His classmate, Chase - a junior - showed off a more traditional orange pumpkin with stars for eyes and triangles for a mouth.
“Sometimes I do a little bit of adjusting on them if they’re not printing right,” said Bromley. “But for the most part, I print them as-is.”
Bromley added that the class, which is an elective for 10th-12th graders, requires maturity in thought and execution. It’s a credit to her students, then, who have picked up the skills necessary to create all sorts of designs.
Those skills can transfer into an increasing number of careers in computer science and technology-related fields.
“It’s huge, and there is a lot of free software out there that they can work on, but I think that it’s important to also have a hands-on product,” said Bromley. “The coding is all well and good, but it’s hard to see your finished product.”
As the fall semester continues, Bromley will look for more hands-on opportunities for more students, including making chess and checker pieces for chess boards and checker boards made by Lee Ketterer’s shop class.
“There’s a lot of learning curve,” with software such as Tinkercad, according to Bromley. “But once they get it they’re coming up with really cool stuff.”
It’s an exciting journey students are glad to be on with a teacher guiding them every step of the way.
“When (the students) do the 3D printing, you put all the effort into it and you actually get something that is a little more exciting than just doing it and taking a test.”