3-D printer encourages Wheaton students use creativity

At first, Mike Pfile just thought it would be "cool" to have a 3-D printer in his classroom.

But now, in his second year of using it, he sees how the device truly excites his students at Edison Middle School in Wheaton, while teaching them valuable lessons about technology, collaboration and using their creativity.

"I think all teachers are constantly looking for ways to get students engaged," said Edison Principal Rachel Bednar. "There's something engaging about them being able to see their idea they created in a 2-D software program print out in a 3-D model."

Pfile purchased the nearly $1,000 printer and plastic filament last school year with money raised through Donors Choose, a website that allows individuals to make donations to public school classrooms.

"I was impressed by his initiative to find a way to bring this into the school," Bednar said.

Bednar said the printer aligns perfectly with STEM, or science, technology, engineering and math, initiatives, and the new "maker movement," which urges educators to give students more opportunities to be creative, come up with ideas on their own and find a way to create them.

"We've been talking in the last several years in the district about how important that creativity is in terms of their future work life," Bednar said. "Employers really need people who can be creative thinkers and good collaborators."

For a recent assignment, Pfile gave the seventh-graders little direction: make a design, any shape and any color, that includes 2016 and the word Edison or Panthers.

"For a long time the kids have always been told here's the way you need to do it," he said. "I don't want to tell them a way to do it. Have creativity. Do. Just do."

He put the kids in groups and told them to start drawing out ideas on their laptops in a free program called SketchUp. Within minutes, the students had cylinders, circles and other geometric shapes on their screen.

Shortly after, without being instructed to do so, the students were talking with each other and comparing their ideas.

"I know they like it because of their reactions," Pfile said.

Pfile said one of the best parts about the kids using the printer is they must learn through trial and error. Some of them are upset when their designs print out nothing like how they thought it would look when they were designing it on a computer.

"It's hard to get the 3-D idea," he said. "One of the biggest things is it may fail, but that doesn't mean you failed. You look at it and say, 'What happened? OK, that didn't work, I'll re-engineer it, I'll rework it,' and now all of a sudden it prints fine. And then they learn something."