During the December school holidays our daughter went for her first 3D printing workshop with enrichment service provider MAKE Learning. (www.makelearning.co)

We are not unfamiliar with MAKE Learning.  In fact Dana had enjoyed their coding and simple robotics workshop sometime back.

As a parent, I do not to send my child mindlessly for any holiday enrichment. However MAKE Learning is different. From Dana’s past experience, we realized that MAKE Learning does not just focus on the product, but more on the learning and creating process and enhances the application of values such as perseverance, resilience and diligence.

Here, in Dana’s own words, are the anecdotes of what she thinks about the one day 3D printing workshop for kids:

“In the beginning, I thought 3D printing was a simple and straight forward process. I did not know that it involved coding etc…

The lesson began with the coaches finding out how much the kids knew about coding. They then explained how the 3D printer works. We were then taught how coding is involved in 3D printing and how to change the width, height and base etc. for the figure to be the size you desire. After that as a class, we attempted to make a house, following coach Chee Wee’s instructions, step by step. After a while, we were able to successfully create our very own bookmark with minimal guidance.

After this workshop, my impression of 3D printing really changed! It is a fun and useful skill which takes time to learn and is not easy and straight forward. Like all other skills, it takes time to master and always needs patience and practice to master.

I would gladly take part in another one on MAKE’s workshops. Thanks to Coach Chee Wee and Coach Jun Hui for making all of this possible and may they continue to strive and inspire young minds.”

Towards the end, while Dana did not manage to print all the object that she wanted to, she still learnt much about the process, particularly about the mind set and discipline needed to complement learning with technology. She revisited and applied values of perseverance, resilience, and the virtues of team work.

Technology is already an essential part of our everyday lives. For our kids, learning using technology will be even more pervasive in the future. Therefore for our children to thrive in the future, their learning has to be in tandem with the use of technology with a daring-to-try spirit to adopt a lifelong learning mentality.

On that note, the good folks at MAKE Learning seem to have hit the nail spot on when it comes to teaching kids’ these essential values.

For more information on Make Learning, visit their website at :

www.makelearning.co

Disclaimer:  Our daughter received a sponsored session of the workshop. However the opinions expressed are, as always, genuinely ours.