ChandlerTechTeam

To realize the opportunity that the maker movement offers education, students need room for self-directed learning and interdisciplinary problem solving.

While setting up spaces for hands-on tinkering, schools also need to make mental space for creativity, risk taking, and learning from failure. Those qualities are central to maker culture, but still rare in too many school settings.

More important than gaining access to expensive tools is learning how to turn raw ideas into prototypes that can be tested, refined, and improved through feedback.

One of the big names in the CAD application industry is AutoDesk. While much of AutoDesk’s professional-level products are only available for purchase, the company has created a number of free CAD applications that can be used with 3D printers. AutoDesk offers 123D Design to users as a fast and easy tool for creating 3D objects that can be immediately sent to a connected 3D printer. But don’t ignore the company’s other free apps. 123D Creature and 123D Sculpt are two iPad apps that let users create custom objects on an iPad that can be saved and printed. 123D Catch lets users take a number of photographs of an object (from various angles) and then converts it to a 3D model that can be tweaked and then printed. Finally, 123D Make can take a model and slice it into layers that can be cut out in wood, plastic, or cardboard and then assembled.

From autumn 2016, students won't have to learn cursive handwriting or calligraphy, but will instead be taught typing skills, the report says. "Fluent typing skills are an important national competence,

she points out that handwriting helps children to develop fine motor skills and brain function, and suggests handwriting classes could be replaced by handicrafts and drawing.

"Handwriting is a totally useless skill. Maybe not as useless as compulsory Swedish, but coming pretty close to it."

According to a recent study of middle school science students and teachers, the teachers tended to have greater technology use.

Do school-age students fit the digital native profile? Do school-age students surpass their teachers in terms of technology use? What roles do teachers play in shaping students' technology experiences inside the classroom?

"In many ways," the researchers wrote, "it is determined by the requirements teachers place on their students to make use of new technologies and the ways teachers integrate new technologies in their teaching."