For those who've been along for the ride the past few years, you already know about my venture into 3D printing. 

Over the last three years, Mr. Bonneville and Mr. Oberhauser have asked me to come in and work with their students on creating keychains in Desmos, then printing them up using a 3D printer I take around the district when teachers want to bring their ideas to life. Check out the previous two years we have done the activity.

This year, knowing that the teachers are even more comfortable with the process than before, I had an even bigger challenge: not being the guy who swooped in to teach the classes. In fact, in many of the classes, they didn't need my help at all. This is great news. As an instructional coach, we are often talking about "coaching our way out of a job." In this instance, the only need for me is on the 3D printing side of things, and I am confident that next year, they won't even need me for that. Mr. Bonneville already jokes about me bringing "his" printer in for the project, so maybe he's on to something...

A number of people have asked how we go from Desmos to a printed product, so I wanted to lay out the details here. If you have any questions whatsoever, please comment below.

1. Read this breakdown for the students, and make adjustments as necessary for your students: bit.ly/mathematicalkeychain
2. Once students have created their product in Desmos, make sure that they changed all functions to black. Otherwise, the converter won't pick up the lines. Weird, I know, but that's just how it is.
3. When students export the image from Desmos, I have them export with "medium thickness" on the lines. You may need to go back in and adjust, but that's a good starting point.
4. After the image is converted to an SVG file, have students import it into Tinkercad. There are other programs, more powerful programs, but Tinkercad is simple to use, is compatible with Chrome, and it's free. So yeah, use Tinkercad.
5. One big thing to consider in Tinkercad is how well the product is connected. Most printers use "additive" printing, which means that the second layer builds on the first, 3rd builds on 2nd, and so on. If there is a gap, or too much of an angle, your print will not turn out. This is the most difficult part of 3D printing in my opinion, and this will be where frustration happens. Trial and error, my friend :)
6. Now that the students are done with their model in Tinkercad, have them export the file for printing as an STL file. 
7. You are ready to print! From here, things get weird because different printers have different software. For me, I like Airwolf3D because I have had one for quite some time and it is super reliable. I don't know every company's software, but I would be more than happy to help if you run into issues.

Well, there you have it. Some advice: start small. Design your own, then print it out. Whether it is a success or not, show it to your students. They need to see the good stuff and the not-so-good stuff (kinda like teaching in general, eh?) as they go through the learning process.

The product are well worth the stress, and I'm not talking about the keychains. I'm talking about the oohs and ahhhhs and that's so cool remarks at the end of it all. This is a lesson they are sure to remember.

Happy "ooohs and ahhhs" Fishing

Being an instructional coach for a high school district is not the easiest thing. I miss the kids dearly and toy with the decision of going back into the classroom often. After all, those who are in classrooms are the ones directly affecting and impacting kids. My role is one iteration away from the classroom, which has its benefits and drawbacks. In order to quell that feeling, I have scheduled out days in which I can go in and co-teach, demo a lesson, or hang out with the teacher for the day to be alongside them as they influence the lives of kids.

This week, I was able to head into an Integrated 1 class to demo a lesson about the triangle congruence theorems. Fun fact: I despised this portion of mathematics as a student, so doing these as a teacher coming in for a special day is a bit of karma, which works out perfectly: I don't want this group of students to have as much distaste for congruence as I had going through school.

​The benefit of doing this lesson is that I got to do it last year as well. Thanks to Elissa Miller and Kate Nowak, the difficult part of creating a meaningful handout was done. If you are teaching triangle congruence, click on each of their names and DO THIS ACTIVITY!

Being a guest teacher has its advantages and drawbacks. One advantage is that I get to come in and be the novelty, so classroom management isn't usually an issue. Not only that, but the novelty of my style, which is going to be different than almost any teacher, is weird enough to throw kids off and keep their attention for the period. One major disadvantage is that I don't get to develop a relationship with students, and that is crucial to letting them experience success in the long run. Seriously. Especially when kids cry.

I made a kid cry. And I don't* regret a thing.

With about 10 minutes left in class, the teacher comes up to me and tells me that one of her students, the one she had just checked in on, is crying. She is so frustrated about not being able to create a triangle with a 30 degree angle and a 70 degree angle, and she has broken down into tears. This didn't happen last year with the same exact activity. This hasn't happened in a loooooooong time for me (like, since Mr. Sierpinski's Triangle). Sure, kids have cried in my class, but it's because something outside of class caused it; not the math or the struggle that went with it.

Yesterday, I listened to Doug Fisher share about scaffolding and that we have scaffolded the struggle out of our students' educational experience. THAT is what has happened here and it's a shame!

This student, a middle-of-the-road performer, hasn't struggled with math content in far too long. She hasn't been given a task that challenged her to think critically, employ the Standards for Mathematical Practice, and encouraged/forced her to persevere through it. She hasn't been asked to use appropriate tools strategically or to construct a viable argument. Rather, this student--and her classmates--has been given problems to solve and, for the most part, experienced success in doing so.

​I circled back to the student at the end of the period and asked her what she was trying to do. 

"I... I am working on E. An angle of... 30 degrees(wipes tears)... and an angle of 70 degrees."

"Great! Can I borrow your protractor? I just want to get caught up with your thinking. (checks angles, sees that the 30 degree angle is not 30 degrees). Alright. The 70 degree angle looks good; see?"

"Yeah...(sniffle)"

"Now let's look at the 30. (points to the 20) Where do you see this crossing?"

"Oh... at the 20... wait, 22 degrees? Yeah, 22 degrees"

"OK, so do we know how to fix it? Show me. Here's the protractor"

From here, the student marked the 30 degree angle correctly, finished her triangle, and wiped away a small tear running down her face, a gentle reminder that she once struggled with something she now saw clearly. I might have even seen a slight smirk of confidence.

She was given the chance to struggle, and she learned from it.

We need to let kids do more of that in math class.

Happy "Sometimes Tears Are OK" Fishing

*of course I never want a kid to cry, but I don't regret the activity the way that it happened.