3D Printing Workshop- Juliana

This past Wednesday, I assisted Tarah and Sam with the 3D printing workshop for a group of women that took place in the Innovation Workshop. I learned a lot from this experience which is why I am choosing to write about it for my blog this week.

Before this workshop, I had very little experience using the 3D printers. I honestly wasn’t sure how much help I would be, but I did my best to keep an open mind. Before the group came in, Tarah gave me a 3-minute speed tutorial on the basics of Tinkercad, an application used to design 3D prints, which is what she would be teaching the group how to use in this workshop. I picked up on it pretty quickly, as it is a pretty simple application to use, and I was only learning the very basics of the program.

Once the group came in, Tarah asked them about their knowledge of 3D printers and computers, as well as why they were interested to learn more about them. Throughout the workshop, I learned that there was a very large range of computer knowledge among this group of women. I noticed that the older women tended to have a harder time with the program most likely because they did not grow up using computers like we all did, which would make learning a simple program like this much more difficult. One woman who was beginning to get frustrated leaned over and whispered to me “I hate computers.” I had to teach many of them very simple functions such as how to drag and drop an object, and how to zoom in and out of the plane. Eventually they were all able to complete some sort of simple design that would be 3D printed. All of these challenges that the group was having made me think about how different one’s learning experience can be depending on previous experiences.

Although it was a slightly different scenario, these challenges are similar to the ones that we face every day at MOXI. Guests at MOXI come from many different backgrounds, and depending on which exhibit they are at, it is our job to figure out how we can continue to deepen guests’ engagement and understanding of that exhibit.